


For Better or Worse

by DragonBandit



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Because Damien, Canon Divergence, Damien claws his way into being a person, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, past self-harm, redemption arc, see story notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-18 23:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: All Damien ever wanted was someone who wanted him. All Damien deserves is to die alone, stripped bare of any of the comforts or affections of humanity, a title he willingly shed.Mark Bryant seems to be the Universe's compromise.Wherein Damien and Mark are soulmates, and this changes enough.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not have been possible without [laughablyunimportant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughablyunimportant/pseuds/laughablyunimportant)  
> I owe her both for getting me into this fandom, and this pairing, and then cheering me on as I got increasingly stuck writing what was MEANT to be at most a 7k work. 
> 
> (This is officially the longest work for this pairing and close to one of the longest for the fandom so. Sorry about that.)
> 
> About the past self-harm tag: Damien has in the past scratched up his arm badly enough to leave scars. There is a scene that focuses on the aftermath/emotional healing side of it. So if this is a thing that would upset you, please take care

Damien doesn’t think about his soulmate. He knows he has one, hard to ignore it when he’s got the mark scrawled across the inside of his arm. Byron Mark Bryant, stretched from his elbow to his wrist. Looks like it was written in sharpie by someone in too much of a hurry to do a good job on it. He’s probably already married, has a few kids, a dog, white picket fence. You know, the American Dream that they’re all meant to be striving towards. Well, not Damien. He’s not enough of a romantic to think he might have anything close to a chance with this man.

Ignoring the fact that less than a third of the world ends up finding their fated person, Soul marks are for humans.

Damien isn’t human.

Sometimes he plays pretend and imagines a Mark who loves him and keeps loving him after Damien doesn’t want him to anymore. Sometimes he imagines a Mark who has the same ability he has, this complex way of twisting humanity into his bidding. Sometimes he imagines a Mark who understands everything. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes.

 

(Always.)

 

* * *

 

Dr B’s brother has Robert Gorham on his wrist. A Biro ink afternote except that anyone paying attention _knows_. Damien steals glances at it as they drive away. First from the AM, and then from Dr B. It’s his handwriting, no doubt about that. His handwriting, his name and around the brother’s wrist is a hospital tag that declares him to be Byron M. Bryant and well--well isn’t that interesting. He introduces himself as Mark, and Damien doesn’t call him on it.

Somewhere along the journey Mark mentions a “Sam” and something in Damien’s chest goes tight and cold and hollow and he _hates it._

“Go to sleep,” Damien says. “You’ve just been through a lot. We can talk later.”

Mark smiles at him, not even the hint of suspicion to be found. He drops his head back against the shitty headrest of the stolen car. It’s kind of a disappointment honestly. Damien had been hoping for someone who could resist him at the very least.

He rationalises it as Mark being tired, of being in a coma so long he started to make up imaginary girlfriends to pass the time. Of course he’s not going to be at his best.

Damien taps on the steering wheel, and thinks about how Dr B. said her brother was a mimic, and how she all but promised that Damien would never see Mark again as soon as he was delivered into his loving sister’s arms. Afraid of what Damien’s power would do to him, probably. Or maybe just angry at the fact she had to rely on Damien at all. Would that change? If she saw Damien’s wrist? He doubts it. If anything, it would make it worse.

Damien gets what he wants. Right now he wants to keep Mark. His _soulmate_ and Damien has no idea what he’s supposed to do with that. Is this the universe's way of telling him to be a good person? To stick his neck out for others, because good things like people that are literally meant to be his fall into his lap when he does? Or is Mark going to turn into Pandora’s box? A thing that Damien should drop off at the nearest rest point before everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

How’s he meant to find out if he’s holding a ticking time bomb?

Damien snorts, people are always dangerous. The trick is getting what Damien wants out of them before they explode. He doubts Mark will be any different, soulmate or not.

And this isn’t helping him find a motel shitty enough to not care about the hospital scrubs but also clean enough that neither of them will end up with lice after a night. He puts it out of his head. Tries not to glance at Mark’s sleeping form too much as he drives.

 

* * *

 

The arguments start as soon as Mark’s strong enough to fight back. What about my sister, what about my life, what about going outside, what about a camera?

Damien gets sick of saying no to a man who introduces himself as Mark to everyone they meet standing next to wanted posters bearing his image. Idiot.

Get out of my head Damien, stop making me want things. I don’t want to talk about my ability. I don’t want to talk about the AM. I don’t want to talk! Is that all you ever care about? What I can _do_? Am I just some party trick for you?

He hates Damien.

“No I don’t, stop making me want to hate you.”

“I don’t want you to hate me.” Damien denies.

Mark taps the side of his head and grimaces. “You know I can tell when you’re using your ability on me. You aren’t that subtle.”

“Why would I want you to hate me?” Damien returns. “What would I possibly get out of that?”

Mark collapses into the motel bed. A side affect of being in a coma for so long is that he can never stand upright for very long. He frowns up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I said I could feel your power. I didn’t say I could understand you.”

Damien’s glad that Mark doesn’t want to meet his eyes. “Am I that inscrutable?”

“No, most of the time you’re annoyingly transparent. There’s only so many ways you can prod me for information I don’t want to tell you.”

“Come on. Who doesn’t want to talk about their ability?”

“Me.” Mark says. “God Damien can you stay out of my head for _five_ minutes?”

“I can’t help wanting things.” Damien snaps.

“Well want other things, for once. God you’re just like--” Mark cuts himself off. He lasts a minute. “Like the AM. Stop prodding.”

“I’m _nothing_ like them.”

“Really? Because, you know from my perspective, there’s not much difference. I’m still kidnapped, I’m still being forced to talk about things I’d rather bury six-feet deep. I’m _not_ at home with my sister, I’m _not_ taking pictures, I’m _not_ living a normal life!”

“None of us are living normal lives,” Damien says.

“Yeah, but I sure as hell think that there’s a more normal here than _this.”_ Mark gestures broadly to the room at large. Another cookie-cutter motel with suspect sheets and unfortunate wallpaper choices. “Whatever. Apparently I don’t care enough about this argument to continue it.”

Damien watches him for a few minutes. The silence drives him nuts, all the questions he does and doesn’t want Mark to answer churning around at the back of his head. He leaves the room before Mark can yell at him for that again.

Before he completely shuts the door Mark murmurs, “I don’t though. I don’t hate you. I should, but I don’t.”

The door closes with a final, metallic click.

 

* * *

 

 

Mark has a talent, Damien discovers after a few weeks of...whatever this situation is. The talent is finding the shittiest, overdone, melodramatic, soap opera slash rom-com he can find on the hotel’s freeview.

Sometimes it’s action movies, sometimes it’s documentaries, but most of the time when Damien gets back from conning the nearest store out of essentials, he finds Mark watching romance movies. Not even the good stuff, if such a term could be applied to the genre. No, Mark watches the kind of cinema that sane people would run away screaming from.

Eventually he just has to know _why_.

Mark shifts him an annoyed glance, “Ask out loud.”

“Okay. Why are you watching literal trash?”

“Because I happen to like that literal trash,” Mark returns. “Don’t _you_ love watching happy couples meet their destined loves after two hours of painful miscommunication and cliches?”

“No.” Damien says. He watches in complete bemusement as the woman on screen cries because… she’s fallen in love with a woman whose name doesn’t match her mark. “I hope you realise that this is not real life.” he says.

“Of course not,” Mark snorts. “I may have been in a facility for four years, but I’m not that delusional. Things like this are basically disproven anyway. It’s just a story.”

Damien sits on the bed that Mark isn’t sprawled across. He digs in the bag for the takeout he convinced someone to give him, and looks at Mark until he starts eating.

“You don’t believe in romance.” Damien says.

“I believe in romance fine, I don’t believe in soulmarks.” Mark says around a mouthful of rice. “There’s no real science that says they’re romantic to begin with, so that’s one thing that these movies get wrong. And even if I do meet him, what’s to say he waited for me? Or that I even like the man? I’m not wasting my time looking for something that’s probably never going to happen. Why? Do you?”

“Of course not,” Damien echoes. “And it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Markless?” Mark asks.

“Something like that.” He doesn’t want to talk about it. So Mark doesn’t ask.

Damien isn’t sure why he’s so disappointed when Mark doesn’t push back.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Mark reminisces about being trapped in the past with Sam and Damien just wants to burn everything straight to the ground. Who _cares_ about Sam, Mark’s _his_. He never says it out loud, never thinks the want through.

As soon as he thinks it, he’ll want it and as soon as Damien wants it it will happen and yes Damien gets what he wants but--

But even Damien knows a monster when he sees one. He’s already sick of seeing one in the mirror; no reason to make it worse.

Mark never notices a damn thing.

“Really? The AM again? I already told you I didn’t want to talk about it.” Mark rolls his eyes. “How about we talk about something else for a change.”

“Like what?” Damien says.

“Like--oh I don’t know. Twenty questions stuff. Favourite food. First kiss. Things like that.”

Damien gives him a flat look. “Did I miss the part where we turned into teenagers?”

“Yes, and we’ve had the longest sleepover in the world. We might as well play the games for it too--and we don’t have enough people for spin the bottle.”

It’s better than him going on about Sam at least.

“Pizza, and never had one.” Damien says.

“What?”

“Favourite food and first kiss,” Damien says. He feels like an idiot. “You’re the one that wanted to play.”

“Oh.” Mark says, and then, “You’ve never been kissed?”

Damien shrugs. “It’s not worth it if it’s not real.”

Mark whistles.

“What?”

“Just surprised that underneath all that shitty attitude is someone with morals is all.” Mark says.

“It’s not about morals,” Damien snorts. “How would you like it you knew that someone was only trying to be nice to you because you wanted it? You might as well do things with a puppet.”

“You’re telling me no one’s ever wanted to kiss you without you...” Mark wiggles his fingers.

Damien snorts, “What was that?”

“Okay, fine. Your ability.”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Why do you have to sound so disbelieving?” Damien asks. “I’m not that pretty. Unlike some people.”

Mark blinks, and smiles in surprised delight. “You think I’m pretty?”

“I think you look like you haven’t eaten properly for years,” Damien says instead of yes. And he doesn’t know where that thought comes from because Mark looks like Dr B and Damien has never considered the Doctor to be anything more than _annoying_.

Mark just continues to grin. “You are the worst at flirting.”

“Who says I’m trying to flirt?”

“I don’t know, the fact that you’re blushing?”

“Shut up!”

Mark laughs at him, until Damien’s ability makes him stop.

That kind of kills the mood.

“For the record,” Mark says, later. He doesn’t meet Damien’s eyes when he says it.  “You’re not that bad looking, so it was probably your shitty attitude that lost you any kissing opportunities.”

“That an insult?” Damien asks.

“Only if you want it to be.”

 

* * *

 

Mark has panic attacks. About being inside, about the AM, about his ability, about Damien. His breath goes all tight and shallow and his eyes close and Damien has no idea what to do.

He’s never done human emotions before. He’s never wanted to--more trouble than they’re worth and it all just ends with broken feelings.

The problem is that now Damien does. He has to help Mark through whatever it is he’s worked himself up about this time. Wanting Mark to be fixed just made him even more upset.

“It’s your fault you asshole, if you didn’t stop making me _want to tell you things_.”

“I can’t help being curious,” Damien snaps back.

Mark practically flinches, drawing in on himself.

Damien does the only thing he knows how to help in this situation: He leaves. Gives Mark some time alone.

Time heals all wounds. Doesn’t it?

 

* * *

 

And then there are other times, where it’s almost normal and they could be friends on a sightseeing trip together.

Those are almost worse than the panic attacks--They make Damien forget he’s living off borrowed time. And that leads to forgetting other things. That leads to forgetting _everything_.

 

* * *

  


“Oh that’s just _sick_ .” Mark says. He struggles with his seatbelt, and then out of the car. “You know I thought I could trust you to at least not _want this.”_

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Damien says, caught on Mark’s lips which are red and bitten, and how even when he’s furious he’s beautiful. They’re by the side of a truck stop, and Damien is sure that so long as he wants Mark to come back, Mark will. But that’s the only thing he wants right now.

“ _Really_ ,” Mark hisses. “So the fact that I’m suddenly gripped by the desire to kiss you has nothing at all to do with you, huh?”

“No. I told you, I don’t want things like that.”

“You’re doing a very good job of putting it into my head then.”

Damien stares at him. “Maybe it’s you that wants to kiss me.” And stamps down on the thrill that comes with that.

“I’m not the one with Lima Syndrome, Damien.” Mark turns away.

“With what?”

“You can ask my sister the next time we see her!” Mark yells over his shoulder.

Damien watches Mark head into the diner attached to this strip of motorway. His hands are so tight on the steering wheel his knuckles are turning white.

All he’d been doing was thinking about stupid romance movies because Mark had been talking about them. He wants to go see some of the pop culture he’s missed and Damien is half tempted to indulge him if only because it’ll stop Mark’s nagging for two hours. In fact, halfway through the conversation Damien had tuned out.

And then his thoughts had meandered, and he’d caught the tilt of Mark’s mouth in a rare smile out of the corner of his eye and…

Well. That would do it wouldn’t it.

Fuck.

 

* * *

 

It all goes to hell eventually.

Mark _snaps_ and Damien’s head snaps with him.

“My name’s Robert,” Damien says, the truth dragged out of him.

Mark snorts. “Yeah right. Stop lying Damien.” His hands wrapped around the name on his wrist, glaring at Damien like he’s shot a puppy. “Don’t lie to me ever again.”

And damn everything, because Damien doesn’t. He clenches his teeth around everything he wants to say. And he hates this, fucking hates it. He scratches his fingernails against his mark, like if he rubs enough it will leave him. Damien hates the way that he and Mark match--bookends both trying to erase a truth they don’t want.

“Fuck you,” he says. “Fuck you,” and means it. He’s never showing Mark his name. Damien would rather die than do that. Punishment. Mark is definitely some form of punishment.

 

* * *

 

The awful part, the really, really awful part about the whole thing is...is that Damien doesn’t actually care.

Mark’s wants bubbling under his skin feels _good._ Hot and awful and intoxicating all at once. If it wasn’t for the fact that Damien can’t influence him back, he doesn’t think he would give a fuck about it at all.

Of course, Damien can’t influence him back, and the lack of control is a little too familiar for comfort. But this could be good, some part of Damien keeps thinking. This could be _really, really good._ He doesn’t fight it as hard as he should.

 

* * *

 

Technically it’s Damien who shoves Mark up against a wall, but Mark’s the one who’s been thinking about doing it for four hours straight. So really, it’s not his fault.

Mark’s lips are hungry against his throat, a wire going taught and snapping. Pain blooms where teeth sink into skin, and suck.

Damien doesn’t bother to hide his reaction: a high keen that maybe if he were thinking he’d feel embarrassed about. He’s not thinking--he’s wanting. And he wants more of whatever this is, in whatever form he can get it.

But Mark freezes, his hands curled into Damien’s shirt flatten, and push him away.

“No.” Mark says. He curls his arms around his own shoulders, turning away. “No.”

“You want it,” Damien points out. He can feel the after image of every place they’ve been in contact. Heat lingering on his skin.

“You don’t.”

Damien shrugs, not sure how to word that it doesn’t matter what he wants without sounding like the start of some after school special. In the end he doesn’t bother. “Stop thinking about it then.”

Mark doesn’t. The unfamiliar lust curls in the bottom of Damien’s stomach. He wants what Mark wants. Right now Mark wants him. But Mark sits on his motel bed and steadfastly watches TV for the rest of the night. Every so often his eyes flicker in Damien’s direction, and Damien raises his eyebrows. Waiting.

Damien doesn’t like the feeling.

He likes it too much.

Being wanted is such a heady drug, made even more potent by the fact that this time Damien knows for a fact that it isn’t _his fault_.

 

* * *

 

Mark drives them closer and closer to home and Damien’s gut deals with his own trepidation and Mark’s at once.

“Knock it off,” he tries.

Mark laughs bitterly, “I can’t help _wanting_ things Damien.”

Damien doesn’t try again.

 

* * *

 

Mark still has panic attacks. Dark, twisted things that tear them both up inside and it’s so much worse now that Damien is feeling it along with him in stereo. Blood at the back of his mouth, sick churning in his stomach and the closed door is both a blessing and a curse.

Mark can never decide if he wants Damien to stay or go during them. He alternates between clinging and pushing Damien away and the flip-flopping of want makes Damien sea-sick.

“I’m sorry,” Damien says once, when Mark has decided he wants to be touched more than he wants to be left alone. “I’m sorry,” and he means it.

Mark sobs against his chest, spilling out nonsensical phrases as his breath comes in shuddering gasps.

Damien may be a monster, and Mark may be his punishment but Mark’s also the closest thing Damien has to a friend and it hurts more than ever to feel how damaged he is.

To realise that some of that damage is Damien’s fault. God, the person literally made to be Damien’s match and he’s spent months _ruining them._

No wonder Mark fucking hates him.

They never talk about it afterwards because Mark doesn’t want to. Damien isn’t sure if it’s because right now he only has Damien to talk to, or if this is a want that includes everyone. He’s not sure what he wants the answer to be.

 

* * *

 

They keep heading towards home. Mark’s wants get more and more twisted up as they go.

 

* * *

 

And then there’s the clusterfuck that is Dr B. and Sam and Chloe and Mark and Damien all in the same room together, isn’t this a wonderful family reunion. Really! Someone should have brought snacks.

Dr B. doesn’t want him there. Neither does anyone else and on any other day that wouldn’t be a problem but right now Damien’s head is _fucking broken._ Literally and figuratively because the first thing Sam does upon meeting him is to punch him in the nose.

Mark, like the worst knight in sparkly shiny armour, tries to calm everyone down. It doesn’t work. Sam disappears. Damien is left with the mind reader while the long-estranged siblings have it out in private.

Damien tries futilely to stop the bleeding while Chloe mutters under her breath reactions to a conversation that she’s not meant to be part of.

“So it’s fine when you invade people’s privacy?” Damien snarks.

“I’m trying to not listen that hard!” Chloe protests, “They’re both just, very loud right now. And this is nothing at all like what you can do!”

“No, it’s worse.” Damien says. “At least people know when I’m using my power on them if they pay attention. You’re just a sneak.”

“I am not! And shut up.”

She’s surprised when Damien actually does. She looks at him like she’s trying to work out what trick he’s playing, then clearly loses interest and goes back to spying on Mark and Dr B.

And then her face goes white, and she just _stares_ at Damien.

“You’re not,” She says. “You’re Mark’s _soulmate_?”

The world drops out through Damien’s stomach. “How do you know that. You can’t see into my head. There’s no possible way you should--Mark.” The last word is practically a growl.

He doesn’t wait for Chloe to confirm or deny, just stalks up to the office door and flings it open. He doesn’t stop moving until the collar of Mark’s T-shirt is clenched in his fist.

“You knew? You knew this entire time and didn’t bother to tell me?”

Mark considers him. “Get off me,” he says.

Damien has to comply. He tries fighting it for all of three seconds before the agonising headache that causes forces him to stop. Damien crosses his arms, and repeats the question.

Mark just rolls his eyes. “Of course I knew; we shared a room for months. You’re not _that_ good.”

And that.

Hurts.

“I’m sorry,” Dr B. says. “Is this a conversation that the rest of the room can be privy to?”

“No,” Damien manages to say before Mark overrides him with a hollow laugh, and a sharp gesture towards Damien.  

“Joanie, meet Robert Gorham.” Mark pauses, waiting for--something. When Dr B. just raises her eyebrows Mark sighs. “As in the Robert Gorham on my arm. Come on Joanie I only showed it to you half a million times.”

The shoe drops. Dr B.’s mouth turns into a round O. “You’re sure?”

Mark gives a tight nod.

And that’s when everything _really_ goes to hell.

 

* * *

 

They abandon him. Leave him in his shitty apartment, hand him a phone so Damien can coordinate appointments with Dr. B, and expect him to--what? Rot away?

It’s decided--without Damien’s involvement--that he and Mark are to not see each other anymore. Damien doesn’t find out if Mark had any say in the matter. Sometimes he’s bored enough to admit to himself that he already knows. Everyone leaves eventually. Friends, parents, soulmates. Whatever.

Eventually everyone realises what kind of monster Damien is.

Dr B. bless her heart, seems to think it’s her duty to help him. Hence the appointments. And the credit card under her name after she makes him explain that he doesn’t have a social security number, bank account or the paperwork required to get them. Damien would shred it, except for the fact that shoplifting is such a pain in the ass. Outside of the appointments she tends to keep her distance. Harsh, when Damien’s the closest thing she has to a friend.

Damien’s starting to think that’s not quite the case anymore though. God, she’s a shit therapist; unable to keep her distance even without the help of Damien’s power.

When his phone starts ringing out of the blue, with the one contact that Damien’s bothered to put into it, Damien isn’t expecting it. He picks up anyway, because there’s nothing else for him to do.

“Hello, Dr B. I wasn’t expecting to hear your dulcet tones today.”

“Hi Damien,” Mark says.

Damien freezes.

He hates the empty parts of him that ache at the sound of the man’s voice.

“You’re not Dr B.” He says, faking casual. “Did you steal her phone just to talk to little old me?”

Mark barks something that might be a laugh. “Well Joan’s the only one who knows your number and she wasn’t going to tell me what it was. So I had to try alternate methods.”

“And you’re the man that everyone was trying to convince me was such a golden boy,” Damien says. “Why are you calling me.”

“Can’t a guy just call with no ulterior motive?”

“No. Not you. Not when you’re calling _me._ So why are you calling Mark?”

There’s a long stretch of just static. “Honestly I have no fucking clue,” Mark says in a rush. “I should keep you as far away from me as possible considering--everything. But you know, everything else…” Mark lapses into silence again. “I guess I’m calling because I’m your soulmate. Whatever that means.”

“You don’t believe in marks,” Damien says. “Try again.”

Another long pause, and something that might be a sigh or might just be a bad phone connection. “Despite everything, Damien, you’re still my friend. You shouldn’t be--god--I should hate you. I think I do hate you. For--everything. You fucked me up, at least with the AM I know that they’re bad. With you it’s like--” Mark makes a familiar choking sound.

“You’re having a panic attack.”

“I am _not_.” But the hitch in Mark’s voice betrays him.

Damien’s chest aches.

“What do you want from me?” he asks. Then, “Do you want me to be near you.”

“No that’s why I’m doing this through a phone,” Mark says. “This way we can’t influence each other and maybe I can say what I want to without worrying about what it does to you.”

“So you know it’s real,” Damien offers.

Another awful, hysteria tinged laugh. “Yeah. Yeah. God no wonder you’re fucked up, with _this_ as your every day. You get everything you want but it’s all just smoke and mirrors at the end isn’t it. Nothing ever stays solid with your power.”

“No one else understands that,” Damien says, very quietly.

Mark’s breath shudders down the phone connection in static filled bursts. 1-2-3. 3-2-1. A breathing exercise, that’s new. Mark must have called him at the end of it for him to be this coherent.

“You’re still an asshole,” Mark says, and this time Damien can half hear the smile in the words. His voice shakes less, not confident but playing at it. “And you sound like a cartoon villain sometimes which really doesn’t help you make friends you know.”

“I don’t want friends.”

“Says the guy who’s first thought whenever he meets someone new is always “I hope you like me.””

“It is not!”

“I was around you for _months_ I know when you’re lying,” Sing-song, Mark adds, “And I felt your power, I know exactly how you work.”

“If you’re just going to insult me, I’m going to hang up on you.” Damien says.

“No you’re not. If you were going to hang up you would have done it already.”

“So get to the point already.”

But Mark falters.”I want--” And then the connection goes silent again. Muffled, Damien hears “Mark what are you doing with my phone?” Before the line goes dead.

 

* * *

 

The first text Damien gets is two words long: “It’s me.”

He saves the number under Mark and doesn’t call. Mark doesn’t either, so Damien isn’t sure why he bothered to find out the number at all.

He gets the distinct feeling that Mark is waiting for something. Damien wishes he would just cut through the bullshit and say it.

 

* * *

 

The problem is that Damien doesn’t do human feelings. The problem is that Damien’s never bothered to learn all the nuances that make up people. He’s never needed to before.

The problem is that Damien is sure that if he doesn’t work it out soon, the tiny, barely there sliver of Mark will disappear through his fingers, and never come back.

 

* * *

 

“What? Damien?” Mark says, voice fuzzy with sleep.

Damien pulls his phone away from his ear to check the time: 3am. When had that happened?

“I can call back later,” He says. “I didn’t realise it was that late.”

“No I’m awake now. I’m not going to sleep again tonight. What is it?”

Damien chews on his lip, then says, “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“For kidnapping you. And making you talk. And everything else. I had my reasons, you know all of them but--” god this is hard. He wishes Mark would just say something. Damien feels like he’s jumping out a plane without a parachute. “Look, I can’t work out why else you would have called me except to chew me out and--I’m not good at this. I’m sorry, ok?”

Mark says, “Do you mean it?”

Damien says, “Yes.”

Mark hangs up. Damien resists the urge to throw his phone across the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Mark calls back at noon, just before Damien has to go see Dr B. for another meaningless appointment where she tries not to gloat about his loss of powers, and Damien tries not to strangle her for it. 

“So I didn’t dream this morning did I?” Mark starts, “Because while my phone says you called, and I remember that conversation, what you said doesn’t make any sense.”

Damien flushes, glad that this is happening over the phone, so Mark can’t see his humiliation as well as hear it. “I thought you wanted an apology.”

“So you said that because you thought I wanted to hear it.”

“Yeah? What? Was it wrong?”

Mark sounds like he’s laughing. Or crying. Or both. “I’m not some machine that you can fuck around with Damien! You don’t get points for saying what I want!”

“Why not? It means I care doesn’t it?”

“No! That’s not what caring is!” 

Damien snarls, “Then what is it Mark? Huh? What am I supposed to be doing here? How am I supposed to--” He bites down on the last of it, choking on the sincerity and want that cling to his tongue like bile.

“Supposed to what? Damien?”

“I’m late to my appointment.”  

This time, he hangs up first. 

 

* * *

 

Mark’s there. Sitting in Dr B’s waiting room. Damien takes one look at him, and turns around. 

“Wait,” Mark says. He stands up, following Damien, “Wait, please don’t leave.”

“We’re not meant to be around each other.” Already, he can feel Mark’s want rooting his feet to the floor. He refuses to turn around, even though he wants to. 

“Talking over the phone wasn’t working.”

“So you’re going to force whatever you want out of me now.” Damien laughs. “I thought you were meant to be the good one.” 

“Maybe I just wanted to see your face.”

“Go away, Mark.” 

“That’s not how this works, Damien.” Mark says. And then he pauses. Remorse tinges the rest of what he says. “God. God how do you deal with this.”

“That,” Damien says viciously, “Is not my problem. Now get the fuck out so I can be tortured by your sister in peace.”

His feet still can’t move. 

“Joanie isn’t in right now.” Mark says. 

“What did you do?”

“I told her that you cancelled. And considering how late you already were, she took me at face value. She doesn’t have any other reason to be here, since she makes a point of scheduling your appointments outside of office hours. So it’s just us.”

“Why the fuck would you think that was a good idea.”

“Because I need to talk to you.” Mark takes Damien’s wrist, and even through the leather jacket, Damien can feel the heat over his mark. “And we should do this somewhere else. Take a walk with me?”

Damien looks up at Mark. He hates Mark’s earnest, hopeful, entirely too handsome face. 

“If it makes you feel better to pretend I have a choice, sure. Let’s take a walk.”

Mark grimaces, but he doesn’t let go of Damien’s wrist, doesn’t come back to the meager senses he usually manages to sustain.  Mark leads them to the park across the street from Dr B.’s office. Where what feels like a thousand years ago, Damien met a kid empath and his boyfriend before Chloe warned them away.

For longer than Damien can stand, Mark stays silent. Not that it matters, when Damien can feel everything that Mark wants him to say itching under his skin like a bad rash. He grits his teeth against it. He may be kidnapped (oh how the tables turn), but that’s the only thing that Damien is letting Mark have for free. The effort gives him a headache, pounding low behind his eyes. 

“What were you going to say?” Mark asks after they’ve completed one full loop of the park. No one else is around. Everyone else has realised it’s too cold to be outside on a miserable day like this. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“The phone call. What was the phone call about?”

“You called me.” Damien reminds him. 

“Yeah, so I could ask you: what the fuck was the phone call about?” 

Damien shrugs. “You wanted it.”

“Okay if you’re going to lie, at least pick one that makes sense.” Mark runs a hand through his hair--short now. Someone must have cut it. “I can’t influence you over the phone. I especially can’t do it when you’re the one that called.”

“Sometimes,” Damien says, “You don’t need to have a superpower to work things out.” 

“And you thought that I wanted to hear you apologise?” 

Damien nods. There, he gets it. Can this conversation be over already? But Mark makes that same, frustrated sound he’d made over the phone. 

“I am not a machine that you can pour apologies into and get whatever you want out of.”

“That’s not why I did it.” 

“Then  _ why did you?” _

Mark wants him to spill. 

Fine. 

He spins towards Mark, not thinking, and not caring either. He’s done. He tried and it didn’t work. This is all he has left. 

It’s pathetically easy to grab onto the collar of Mark’s jacket and pull him down until Damien’s mouth is mashed against his in some sick parody of a kiss. Their teeth clack and Damien doesn’t close his eyes. In total, it lasts barely more than a handful of seconds. 

“Because I care,” Damien spits out when Mark just keeps  _ staring _ at him. He looks anywhere except the sheer confusion painted across Mark’s face. “Okay? I care about you. And I have no  _ clue _ what I’m supposed to do so I have to guess. Because unlike everyone else in the world, I didn’t get the luxury of finding out how this is meant to work. I didn’t get to have play dates, and conversations over coffee while we gazed into each other’s eyes and fell in love or whatever, because I’m not  _ like _ everyone else. When I want something, Mark,  _ it happens. _ ” 

Mark’s still staring at him. And he still doesn’t know what Damien’s talking about, because the want for Damien to explain is still there. Tough--all Damien can do is repeat himself. He’s not humiliating himself further. 

He grits his teeth around other explanations for the same thing, and starts walking. Mark, after a beat, matches his pace. He keeps looking at Damien and the scrutiny makes his skin crawl. 

“That time in the car,” Mark says, eventually. “You wanted me to kiss you.” 

“Do you want me to apologise for that as well?”

Mark ignores him. “I thought you were just fucking around. Got bored of drawing out my past trauma so obviously it was time to make new ones. Yeah, I know it was a stupid thing to think, but I was--am--mad at you. But you didn’t try again, like you were afraid of it or something. I couldn’t work out why until…”  He stops abruptly, and when Damien turns on his heel to not not leave Mark behind he hears, “It’s not just kissing is it. You don’t let yourself fall in love either.”

“Now you understand.” Damien says, half sarcastic. 

“Yeah,” Mark says. His hand is wrapped around his forearm. “Yeah, I think I do.” And he’s stepping into Damien’s space, slow like Damien’s some sort of frightened animal. “Do you still? Do you want--” Mark cuts himself off, and bites his lip. The hand that had been reaching for Damien stops in mid air. 

“Right now I want whatever you want,” Damien says. 

Mark steps backwards like he’s been burned. 

The hurt starts somewhere in Damien’s chest and settles there. “And you don’t know what you want,” Damien finishes. 

“Yeah, well you fucked me up real good,” Mark says. “I think I’m allowed to be conflicted about you.”

“It’s annoying.”

“I thought it would be better like that. No want, no influencing.”

“No, just influencing in opposite directions,” Damien says, “It’s a fucking headache. Just pick one.” 

Mark studies him, arms crossed around his chest. His right hand looped around his left wrist, where Damien knows his mark is hidden. “Well I tried staying away,” Mark mutters to himself. Then he looks at Damien, and sticks out his hand. “Hi, I’m Mark. Wanna be friends?”

Damien snorts. “Are we back in grade school?” But he reaches out his hand, and grasps Mark’s for what is probably the most awkward handshake of all time. Mark smiles, and it feels like sunrise. For once all of his wants aligned in a way that Damien can act on them.

 

* * *

 

Damien makes a token effort to hide the blatant disregard for Dr B.’s rules for about… oh maybe five minutes. Then Mark texts him in the middle of a session and Damien doesn’t bother hiding who the message is from. 

Her nostrils practically flare in consternation. (She wants him to delete Mark’s contact so Damien drops his phone and kicks it under the couch instead.) 

“I can’t say I’m happy about this development,” she says, “we still don’t know how you ended up like this. Mark’s ability interfering with yours might make you worse.”

Damien looks at her, and shrugs. “Can’t you just be happy that your brother is getting connected with the outside world? After so long being kept away from it?”

“Normally I would be pleased. But since it’s you he’s decided to talk to I can’t help but think this is rather unhealthy on both your parts.” 

“I’m not allowed to have friends?” 

Dr B.’s eyes close. “You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m merely concerned--”

“That your brother is ruining his life by being around me because I’m a monster who can’t even be trusted with half the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” Damien interrupts. “Well I’m sorry--You’re not in charge of what Mark does anymore than I am.”

In the silence, Damien can hear the hum of Dr B.’s recording machine. She’s frowning at him, eyes steely under her fashionable glasses. 

“We’re not here to talk about Mark,” Dr B. decides, even though she’s just itching for Damien to tell her everything. “Have the exercises I gave you last time helped at all? Have you been doing them?”

Damien says, “No.” to both questions. 

As per usual, Dr B. takes the opportunity to chew him out with truly, not at all restreained glee.

Mark’s text says, “Meet me outside when you’re done?” 

 

* * *

 

An hour later Damien slinks behind a park bench and says “Hey.”

Mark twists to look up at him, phone hanging forgotten from lax fingers. There’s a blue scarf hanging around his neck--the only concession Mark seems to have made for the frost in the air. “Hey. How’d it go?”

“Your sister’s mad at me,” Damien says, “you know, the usual.” If he tilts forwards he can just see the contact on Mark’s phone hidden under his fingers: Sam. 

There’s the familiar feeling in the bottom of Damien’s stomach and he hates it. 

“You know, you could try and be nicer to her,” Mark says. 

“Yeah, when the sky turns green. It’s not just me who pulls on pigtails during my sessions.”

Mark rolls his eyes, but concedes. “And your power?”

“Nothing.” 

“No change at all huh?” 

“That’s what I said.” Damien stuffs his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans. “So are you going to keep thinking about me handing over my coat because you forgot one, or actually do it?”

Mark blinks at him. “Why would I ask you to hand over your coat?”

“Because you’re cold and you want it.” Damien says. 

Mark studies him for that feels like a small eternity.“ Yeah, We’re going to have to work on this.”

“There’s nothing to work on,” Damien says. “The ability works whether you want it to or not.”

“You keep saying that,” Mark says as he stands up and shoves his phone in the pocket of his thin hoodie. “Maybe one day I’ll actually believe you.”  

Mark is horrible at being silent, so Damien listens to him chatter about a new Netflix show he’s gotten addicted to as Mark leads them aimlessly around the mostly deserted park. The rest of the city has obviously decided it’s too cold to bother venturing outside today. Damien buries his chin further in his jacket in an attempt to save his nose from the chill. Mark, wearing just a hoodie with tattered sleeves, looks like he’s about to freeze. 

And Damien--has no idea what he’s meant to be doing here. Mark’s wants don’t help, still flip-flopping between every emotion under the sun. He wants Damien to stay, he wants him to leave in equal measure. He wants to be outside, he wants to be inside. He’s still angry at Damien. He doesn’t want to be angry. 

It’s easy to fight thanks to the fact it never stays still long enough to actually influence him, but the constant barrage is making Damien sea-sick.  

“Do you want to yell at me?” Damien asks when Mark pauses for breath between explaining plot point number four on TV show number eight. 

Mark’s mouth hangs open. In the shocked pause, Damien shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it around Marks shoulders. Marks mouth shuts with a sharp click of  his teeth. “I think I’ve yelled enough at you. Why am I wearing your jacket?” 

“But you’re still mad at me. And you're cold and want it.” 

“I’m probably going to be mad at you for the rest of my life,” Mark says. “Some things people don’t just forget. Kidnapping and mind-raping tends to be at the top of that list.”

He grasps the collar of Damien’s jacket, moving to take it off. Damien glares at him until he shrugs, and pulls the fabric tighter around his frame. 

“I never mind--”

“You got damn close,” Mark interrupts. 

“Oh so you are yelling at me,” Damien says. “I don’t care,” he continues when Mark’s only reaction is his shoulders stiffening. “Yell at me all you like, the rest of the world agrees that I deserve it.”

“Well I’m not trying to be the rest of the world.” Mark’s hand loops around his opposite wrist, and the nameless,  _ want _ that is the undercurrent of Mark’s sea of feelings engulfs Damien until it’s all he can feel. 

It would be great if Damien had any idea what this Want actually meant instead of just making him sick to his stomach and making him feel like he’s going to spontaneously combust. 

“Why not?” Damien pushes, because he can. “You can make me do whatever you want. Even when I get my ability back, you’ll still be able to do this to me. Isn’t it your right to treat me like shit?”

“What, is that what you do with this?”

“I thought you knew the answer to that.”

The Want  _ changes _ . 

“God Damien,” Mark says. “Can’t you just  _ try _ to be a good person?” 

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Damien stares at the sharpie on his arm and tries to scratch it off. He’s been doing that since he was fifteen and realised that he couldn’t have nice things though, so it’s not a new development or anything. The scars marring the surface of his arm prove that. 

He wants Mark. 

One problem with that: Mark wants Sam. Mark wants a decent human being. One who goes above and beyond what’s expected. Someone who rescued him out of the good of their heart instead of the twisted personal reasons that had led Damien to the AM. 

Mark wants someone who met him, got to know him, fell in love with him, like every harlequin romance. Not--not whatever the fuck this thing he and Damien have together is.

God it’s hopeless isn’t it? 

Damien’s fingernails come away from his arm bloody.  

 

* * *

 

After too-many weekly sessions of absolutely zero progress in Damien’s condition, Dr B. cuts off his allowance. 

Damien, like a goddamn adult, does not immediately fall into whatever tantrum Dr B seems to be expecting, considering how loud her want of him to “not to make a scene is”, at the news. 

That’s not to say he takes it gracefully. How’s he meant to feed himself if he doesn’t have any money? He can’t just charm his way into everything these days. 

Dr B. had  _ looked _ at him. This is apparently what jobs are for. 

Damien hadn’t explained that it’s hard to get a job when the last time he’d been in school had been when he was sixteen and that had been out of boredom, as opposed to anyone expecting him to be there. Dr B. hadn’t looked like she’d give a damn about it anyway. 

He leaves her office with only a mild irritation, that grows the further away he gets. But he’d been expecting something like this for awhile, and it’s not the first time in his life Damien’s had to live without his natural charms to help him. It’d been harder, when he’d been younger. 

Not that Damien is at all looking forward to dodging letters, then phone calls, then home visits from his landlord. Again. 

He ends up pacing, lost in thought and not wanting to go home just yet, where he’ll have to check how much cash he’s managed to hoard away. The answer: not much, and with a sinking feeling, Damien realises that he’s forgotten to be  _ careful. _

Food first, then his phone because if Mark can’t get in contact with him he’ll panic, and Dr B. will make that awful face like Damien’s kicked a puppy or something the next time he has an appointment with her. 

“Young man.”

Dimly, Damien notices that the threatening sky has finally started to drizzle with cold rain. 

Heating bill next, it’s starting to get really freezing at night so Damien can’t just ignore that. Rent, if he really has to. 

“Young man.”

Travel expenses after that, though Damien’s got into the habit of walking everywhere. Electricity? Water? Are those two separate bills now or just one? Are they linked to his heating? Shit does Damien even pay for any of this or is it all in his rent?

“Young man!”

Damien looks up. Then down, focusing now on the old man that he would have trampled if he’d walked another few feet. Wild hair still clinging stubbornly to traces of dark brown sticks up in a wild, white, shock around his head. Around his feet are a number of carrier bags, all of them bulging ominously. “Whatever you’re selling I’m not interested,” Damien says. 

“Then you shall be relieved to find I’m not selling anything.” the man says. He gives Damien an amused look. His want is low, background static in Damien’s head. 

Damien is reaching for the bag held loosely in the man’s arms before he can stop himself. 

“Aha, I see I was right about you,” the man says. He puts the bag in Damien’s proffered hand. It’s far heavier than Damien expected. What’s in it, rocks? “I thought to myself, there looks like a fellow who wouldn’t mind lending a hand on this fine day.” 

“It’s raining.” 

“It was a fine day when I woke up, so a fine day it shall remain. The name’s Sir Douglas, I would shake your hand but they’re full right now.” 

The want is no longer background noise. Damn. This is why Damien tries to avoid crowds these days. 

“Come along then, you know you walked past me three times without seeming to even notice it. If you wouldn’t mind an old man prying, what is it that has you so wound up? A paramour, perhaps?”

“Nothing like that.” He dutifully follows his technically-kidnapper off the main street and into a part of town Damien usually avoids due to lack of interest in tiny specialty stores. The rain crashes down on store overhangs, draining into the gutters at the side of the road.  

“I have found that in life there are only two things that make a man pace like that. If it isn’t love, then it must be taxes.”

The old man wants him to continue the conversation. Damien doesn’t have a choice. He’s already trapped. 

“I just lost my job,” Damien says. “Don’t really have enough saved to pay for anything.” 

“An unfortunate state to be in,” Douglas says. “And all too common these days. My grandchildren are always complaining about the state of the economy. I’m sure your employers will be regret their decision.”

“It wasn’t exactly a great job.”

“Then now is a perfect time to find a better one.” The old man smiles. 

Damien mumbles something that might be an acknowledgement. Douglas doesn’t seem to even notice his lack of conversational partner. He just wants Damien to listen now, as he chatters away about his children and grandchildren. All of them out of state these days, what a shame, but they remember to send him Christmas cards every year so there is that. 

Eventually Douglas pauses in his monologue, stopping in front of a darkened storefront, fishing through his pockets until he brandishes a set of keys that are half kitschy little souvenir charms. He stoops over to unlock the door of a shop that seems to be doing it’s best to fade into the stonework of the neighbouring stores. With a small “ta-daa,” Douglas opens the door and ushers Damien through it. 

“Welcome to my humble abode: Tiny Records. The shop may be small but you’ll find a hidden treasure somewhere! Ah, though these days I seem to collect more than sell. Come in! Come in! You can set your bags over here--I’ll sort through them later, and oh dear you really are very soaked and not dressed for it. You should invest in an umbrella young man! What do you drink? Tea? Coffee? I have some hot chocolate powder around somewhere but I can’t guarantee that it’s any good.”

“You don’t need to give me anything,” Damien tries. More a token protest at this point, he’s given up fighting. 

“Nonsense, you helped me out. It’s only fair that I return the favour.” 

“...Coffee’s fine.” 

He ends up weaving through shelves of vinyl records, and haphazard stacks of overflow that spill out onto the floor in every available floor space that isn’t the narrow walkway that Douglas is dances through. Up a set of stairs concealed by a door with “staff only” written on it in bright pink letters, and then into a tiny apartment. Douglas takes Damien’s jacket, tutting at the state it’s in, and then makes Damien take off his shoes and sit at the table while he fiddles with first a kettle, and then a coffee press. 

Frankly, Damien is a little confused as to what he’s meant to do now. Is this a situation where he should be texting someone for help? Probably. On the other hand, it’s going to be truly embarrassing when he has to explain to Dr B. that he can’t even fend off the want of an old man who just wants someone to talk to for half an hour. She doesn’t need any more bait for her conspiracy that he and Mark shouldn’t be near each other anyway. 

So Damien shrugs inwardly, and drinks the coffee. 

“You know,” Douglas says when Damien is about halfway down his mug. It’s nearing luke-warm. “My last assistant went back to school a few weeks ago, and I’ve discovered I’m not as young as I once was.”  He looks at Damien expectantly. “I was hoping to find someone to look after the shop every few days for me.” 

Oh.

Damien pushes for a half second to see if he can get the old man to pour him more coffee. Nothing happens. It’s not him then, and that realisation is more terrifying than if his power had somehow miraculously returned. 

“You really want to give me a job?” 

“Of course! Is that so strange?”

Damien opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s not sure how to explain everything that is people wanting to give Damien things. “You just met me,” he says instead, “You have no idea who I am.”

“I know that you’re willing to listen to an old man ramble for far longer than most people.” 

“That doesn’t make me a good candidate for a job.” 

He’s broken, utterly, irreparably. He’s not a man that people just naturally  _ trust _ . Is he? 

“Can you operate a cash register?”

“A bit.” 

“And what is your opinion on music?”

“Classical is a bitch to play but pop is so boring there isn’t a point.”

“And what about if a customer came in? What would you do in that situation?”

“I’d probably tell them to fuck off.”

Douglas laughs, deep from his stomach, “See? You’re already just the right person for the job!”

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean you’ve never seen Moulin Rouge?” Mark demands. 

“It didn’t seem interesting,” Damien says into his phone. “She dies at the end, big deal.” 

The sound Mark makes is truly pained, and Damien can’t help grinning. “It’s not  _ about that _ .” Mark says. 

“Then what is it about?”

“Truth! Beauty! Love!” Mark pauses like he’s expecting Damien to say something, then carries on, “Young Ewan McGregor? Nicole Kidman?” 

“I have no idea who these people are.” 

“Okay now I know you’re just trying to wind me up.” 

Damien hums, “Maybe a little.” 

“Now I bet you’re going to tell me you’ve never seen West Side Story either.” 

Damien says nothing. He stretches out until he’s lying all the way back on his couch, feet crossed at the ankles. 

“You heathen. How am I your soulmate. What did I do to deserve you? That’s it, you have a session with Joanie today right?” 

“Probably.” Damien hasn’t actually checked his texts yet today. It’s fine, it’s only half an hour past noon. He’ll only be a little bit late if it does happen that he has an appointment. 

“Go to it,” Mark says. “Come on, I know you’ve been missing them.”

“Are you really one to talk, half of our conversations are you hiding from your sister.”

“Yes Damien, but my sister isn’t my therapist. She is yours.  _ Go to her sessions _ .”

“Or what, you’ll make me?” 

“If I have to.” Mark says, far too lightly considering the fear that settles at the base of Damien’s spine at the words. He ignores it--this is his punishment, and he’s accepted that this is a wound that time won’t heal. “I thought you wanted your ability back anyway, why are you skipping?”

“Because they don’t help.” Damien says, “That’s your fault by the way, Dr B. is convinced of it.” 

“You could always hang up.” 

Or he could keep Mark and never have his ability ever again like the universe wants. Damien thinks, and doesn’t say out loud. It’s been weeks, everyone except Mark has already given up on getting Damien back to being a functional person who isn’t at the beck and call of every person he talks to. 

Dr B. seems to be enjoying it. Damien always knew she was a sadist at heart. 

Instead, Damien says, “Why are you so interested in my appointment today?” 

“Well, after your appointment, Joanie is going out with Sam and Chloe to do girl things, so I’m going to be left all alone. Basically making it the perfect time for you to come over and catch up on musicals with me.”

“I don’t think I should do that,” Damien says. 

“Why not?”

“Because your sister hates me; she’s not going to want me in her house.”

“Well Joanie is just going to have to get used to her brother having friends she doesn’t approve of again,” Mark dismisses. “Also I have never once seen you walk past an opportunity to mess with her so what’s the real problem?”

“Should you be encouraging the vendetta I have with Dr B.?” 

“ _ Damien _ .”

“You can’t use my power on me over the phone.”

“I’m not trying to! Why? Are you  _ wanting _ to tell me things?”

“No,” Damien lies.  

“I am giving you my most disappointed look right now.” Mark says. “If this phone had a decent camera I’d take a picture of it and show it to you.”

“Don’t bother,” Damien says. 

“So tell me what’s the real problem with this. Is it the movies? Because you know that’s really just an excuse to hang out right. And it’s not the ability thing because you have shown a remarkable lack of caring at the random manipulation that happens when we’re in the same room together.”

“You should go with Sam,” Damien says. “She’s the one you actually  _ want _ isn’t she?” 

“What? What does Sam have to--” Mark sighs, his voice is flat, “No one told you did they.”

“Told me what?”

“Sam and Chloe are soulmates,” Mark says. “And Sam’s a romantic which made both her and me and you kind of a tricky subject that really just got worse when Chloe recognised her handwriting on Sam’s shoulder. Suffice to say, we’re not together. At all.”

“Oh,” Damien says. The hollow feeling in his stomach changes, but doesn’t disappear. 

“I don’t want her,” Mark says quietly. “Before you get any ideas to break them up for my happiness or whatever you’re pretending makes you a good person these days.”

“Do you think I’m really capable of that?” Damien says, bitter.

“Honestly Damien, I have no idea what you’re capable of.” Mark answers, “so I might as well make sure you don’t do anything stupid now.”

“Because you’re my soulmate?”

“Because you’re my friend,” Mark says, after a brief pause. “Speaking of, are you going to watch the glory that is Moulin Rouge with me or not?”

“Well when you say it like that how can I refuse,” Damien says. 

“Great! See you then! I’ll pick you up at the usual spot.” Mark hangs up. Damien stares at his phone for a few more seconds, before he hunts for his jacket and shoes. 

 

* * *

 

“Hiiii Dr B.” Damien says as he waltzes through her door, “Miss me?” 

“Damien,” Dr B. says, looking up from her ever-present tape-recorder. “Despite our scheduled session, I wasn’t expecting you to appear today.”

Damien makes grand, sweeping gesture with both his arms. “Then you shouldn’t have told certain people that I had to go to them.” 

Dr B.’s lips turn near white with her displeasure, “I take it you and Mark are still in contact.” 

“You sound so disappointed.” He throws himself on the matching armchair that Dr B. is perched on. 

“As I have said, maybe a thousand times now to the both of you, I don’t think that this is a healthy relationship. You can’t guard yourself against the rest of the worlds stray feelings right now at the best of times, and just by being in the same room as you, Mark becomes even more of a person that you’re likely to be drawn to. And that’s not even going into what you did to him.”

If Damien had a quarter for every time he’s had this speech he’d have enough to fill a bathtub with. “Are you done?” he asks. 

He can feel that she isn’t--she wants to push, and press him into  _ actually talking about what happened _ because neither he nor Mark have said anything. It drives her up the walls, because she wants to help Mark, and she wants to know what Damien did to him to make him like this. It’s funny. Everyone assumes that Damien did something (worse), they never wonder if Mark had a hand in anything at all. 

Damien is so glad that out of all the exercises Dr B. has made him do, the one that made him less receptive to other people’s wants was the one that actually worked. He’d actually been able to go to the store yesterday and not randomly hand groceries to strangers as he minded his own business. 

“I just feel like it would be beneficial for us to have this discussion is all,” Dr B. starts, and Damien abruptly decides he really doesn’t want to be having this conversation.

He pushes at the want and twists it. “Aren’t we meant to be trying to get my power back? Or whatever?” 

Dr B.’s want simmers into the background radiation that is Damien’s life right now. The answer is no, Dr B. would prefer if Damien stayed like this for the rest of his life. 

But what she says is: “Of course Damien, these sessions are for you, not for me to satisfy my curiosity. Have you been doing the exercises I asked you to?” 

“Thank’s Dr B. They’ve been  _ fine. _ ”

Well. Isn’t that  _ interesting _ . It doesn’t happen again for the rest of the hour he’s forced to spend here. Maybe because Damien doesn’t try too hard--the exercises he’s forced to do are hard enough without trying to subtly command her wants on top of fighting for his own to stay his own. Or maybe because it wasn’t him at all. Sometimes Dr B. tries to be a regular therapist, whose life isn’t hopelessly entangled with her patients. Sometimes it’s annoying as hell, but maybe this time it’s worked in Damien’s favour.  

She isn’t able to make him do anything stupid today, and he’s able to have a conversation about his favourite author, even though Dr B. thinks the book is a piece of crap and no one should ever even touch it let alone enjoy it, without her own beliefs infecting him. 

“That was a lot better than expected,” Dr B. says at the end of the hour. She’s looking at him funny, with a want that doesn’t make sense because Damien doesn’t have anything to explain. 

“I guess it’s just been a good day,” Damien says. He stands up, locating his jacket from where he’s thrown it over the back of the chair. “Same time next week?”

“Of course, until you feel that you don’t need to attend these sessions anymore.”

“Or until you get bored of keeping tabs on me,” Damien adds. “Bye Dr B. Have fun with  _ Sam.” _

“How do you know about that?”

Damien just grins. The door closes with a click behind him. 

 

* * *

 

Mark drives. In the passenger seat, Damien pretends to listen to him talk about the last episode of Brooklyn 99 and phases out. It’s a bad habit, but Mark only wants him to listen, not to pay attention. Now that they’re in the same space again, Damien can’t help but find all his little wants and doubts piled up just where they’re the most annoying to ignore. 

Now that he’s no longer being prodded by Dr B. Damien can’t help but  _ think _ . 

“Chloe and Sam are soulmates,” he says, in the middle of Mark explaining what a master Holt is at deadpan dialogue. 

“That’s right,” Mark says. 

Damien waits. When Mark just pushes the vague desire to not have this conversation, Damien puts one of the therapy exercises to the test to shield against the want, and pushes, “That must have been a shock.” 

“Why do you care about this?”

“You spent a lot of time talking about Sam, before.” 

Mark’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel, and the want to not be talking about this grows. “I’m happy for them. Don’t do anything.” 

“I thought you didn’t believe in soulmates,” Damien presses. 

“That doesn't mean that I can’t be happy for my friends when reality occasionally lines up with the great cosmic plan that everything has in store for us.” 

“But you still want her.” 

“No I don’t.”

“I can  _ feel it.” _

“No you can’t.” Mark snaps. “And anyway, why do you care? That relationships over. You don’t have to worry about my latent feelings or whatever.”

Damien doesn’t say anything, because Mark’s want finally over rides his own, and his head is too full of anything else to have any other decent conversation. Mark eventually leans over and turns on the radio to some top 40’s channel to drown out the hated silence. 

He’d kissed Mark, in the park when he’d been trying to explain everything. When Mark had understood and hadn’t in equal measure. The want of it all simmers under Damien’s skin and if this were any other situation he’d be cutting ties, burying everything, making Mark hate him because Damien refuses to be that kind of monster. But Damien is powerless, his head is broken. Who gives a shit what he feels, for the first time since he was a teenager it’s just him that has to worry about it. 

So Damien  _ wants.  _ Without expectation, without any hope of it happening. Because as much as Damien wanted Mark, Mark wanted someone else. God, it’s freeing to want and be jealous and hateful and have it not mean  _ anything _ . 

Mark is his punishment. 

Except. 

Except it turns out that everything Damien knew about the world is wrong. The thing he’s not meant to have a snowflake's chance in hell with is--

Sam doesn’t want Mark. Because she’s a romantic, and has her own soulmate, whatever that is meant to mean. 

And that means--

Damien stares at Mark, and for what feels like the first time in his life, he has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do. 

 

* * *

 

“Okay you’re meant to be watching the movie,” Mark says. His eyes are tilted into a smile even as he tries to glare at Damien. He’s sprawled across the couch, feet dangerously in what should be Damien’s space, though Mark has yet to acknowledge this fact. “I know I’m handsome but I cannot be more interesting than the brilliance that is  _ this.” _

Damien gives a cursory glance to the TV. There are people singing, it’s very dramatic. Somewhere an elephant is involved. In deference to Mark taking up most of the couch, he’s curled up, knees up to his chest, arms loosely hanging around his legs. His eyes slide back to Mark, hopefully less obviously. Judging by Mark’s huff it’s not at all subtle. 

But Damien can’t feel the want to watch the movie that hard, so obviously Mark doesn’t mind that much. 

What is it that Mark wants?

Slowly, between confirmations of on-screen love, and the share of soulmarks, and the unfortunate truth that one of the lovely couple is dying, Damien let’s go. 

There are two tricks to not being influenced by everything. The first is to think through it, and come to the conclusion that the want doesn’t belong to him. Then he can find what it is that he actually wants, and do that instead. 

Easy enough, it’s just Damien’s power in reverse. He’s long since gotten used to sifting through the crap in his head to find the important parts. 

It is almost painfully easy to let it all go, and slide under the influence of Mark. 

Mark wants a drink (not allowed while Damien’s around; it’s too dangerous even for them). Mark wants to sing along to the movie (but isn’t because he’ll be the only one). Mark wants to spread out so he’s taking up the entire couch. 

Mark wants…

Damien gives up even a token attempt to not stare. Mark glances at him out of the corner of his eye, smiles a little, but doesn’t say anything. And like that time in the car, what feels like a million years ago, Damien realises that Mark is beautiful. The TV throws coloured light across his face in the darkened room, softening features that never quite lost the emaciated look that the AM had given him. 

Damien desperately, recklessly, wants Mark to kiss him. 

Mark wants--

Something that Damien doesn’t understand. It sits in Damien’s chest under his ribs. A warm weight that coaxes a crooked, uncertain smile across Damien’s face. He hates that smile. Usually he makes sure no one else can see it because it’s too rough, too raw, compared to the smirk that Damien shows the world. But Mark wants to see it, or wants something near it. 

The last time Damien smiled like this willingly he was nineteen and--

Oh. 

Damien averts his eyes. He watches a fat man and a weasel wearing a suit sing about virginity. It’s very loud, and dramatic, Damien has no fucking clue what it’s meant to mean. He tugs his legs closer towards his chest and hides his grin against his knees. 

He knows what this is now. He knows what Mark wants. 

Mark  _ wants him _ .

 

* * *

 

The next thing Damien is aware of is someone gently shaking his shoulder, and softly telling him that it’s time to wake up. Damien blinks open bleary eyes, focusing on the dim lighting of Dr B.’s living room and Mark lit up in the back glow of the TV playing the end credits. 

“Maybe the third movie was a little over-ambitious in retrospect,” Mark says. He smiles at Damien. His shoulder is underneath Damien’s chin and Damien has no idea how that happened. 

“Was it any good?” 

“Oh it’s only my favourite movie of all time, don’t worry about missing exactly all of it,” Mark’s face is too close. Damien leans back, disentangling the both of them. Someone has draped a blanket over his knees. There’s a flash of want, that Damien can’t work out before it’s promptly smothered. “Not that you’ve been watching the movies since the start of course. Do you want to tell me why you thought it was more fun to stare at me for four hours?”

“I was watching the movie.” 

“What’s the last scene of Moulin Rouge?”

Damien pauses. “There’s snow involved?”

“Technically right. Really, really wrong. I bet you don’t even know the names of the other things we watched.”

Damien doesn’t. “You’ll just have to make me watch them again.” 

Mark’s want is a starburst fluttering in Damien’s stomach. “Do you want to? I thought you were bored out of your mind.”

Maybe it’s because he’s half asleep, so none of Damien’s internal walls are up: either the old ones or the new ones, that makes him say, “I like spending time with you.”

Even in the low light, Damien can see the bright red flush spread across Mark’s cheeks. The want has a distinctly pleased undertone to it. 

“It’s because I’m your only friend isn’t it?” Mark teases, no bite to it. 

“You like having my undivided attention,” Damien says. He leans into Mark’s space. “I can feel it.”

Mark is the one who leans back this time, eyes darting away to the end credits still playing, and then back at Damien. 

His want makes Damien lean in further. He’s not even bothering to fight it--the feeling is addictive, and Damien would give up his tongue to always have this sitting under the surface of his thoughts. 

Before he can act on any of what Mark wants him to, the room is flooded with bright light. Damien flinches away from Mark, curling back up in the corner of the couch. In the doorway, Dr B. eyes the both of them with stern disapproval, like she’s caught them doing something illicit. Well, considering Dr B.’s of the opinion that Mark shouldn’t be able to touch Damien with a ten foot pole let alone whatever earlier was, she has. 

“Mark,” she says, tone neutral. Less neutral, “Damien.”

“Dr B,” Damien says at the same time Mark says “Joanie, you’re back early.”

“I have been out for far longer than I was expecting to be,” Dr B. says. “Are you sure you didn’t lose track of time?”

“You know how it is, you can’t just watch one musical,” Mark says. “Did you have fun?”

“It was certainly interesting. I hadn’t quite realised how out of touch I was with the both of them until I was struggling to come up with interesting topics over lunch.”

“I kept telling you to do more things than just work.” Mark scolds. 

“And I keep telling you, sometimes I don’t have time to do anything but work.” 

Damien feels himself fade into the background. He can feel the want of Dr B. knife edged politeness; she doesn’t want him here. Mark is torn in two,  _ again _ , and Damien wishes he would just pick one thing to want. The aftertaste that was Mark’s earlier want has faded, and in its place Damien’s mouth is bitter. 

He untangles himself from the blanket and the couch, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “I’d better go then.” He says to the floor. 

Mark turns to look at him, eyes startled. “Oh. Yeah. I can drive you back to your place?” 

“I don’t live that far away,” Damien lies. 

He feels like an intruder and a thief and he doesn’t know if he’s the one wanting Mark to stay in the living room or if it’s Dr B. or Mark himself. It doesn’t matter--if someone else wants it so does Damien. He’s not as ok with that as he was when it was just Mark in the room. 

Damien gathers his things: shoes and coat in the hall, phone discarded on the floor near the couch. His mental walls so he can stop feeling the urge to apologise for existing. The entire time Mark stares at him out of the corner of his eye, trying and failing to be subtle about it. Damien doesn’t acknowledge it, instead he focuses on wrapping himself up in the old comforting leather of his jacket, and waving bye to the Bryants. 

He’s not expecting Mark to come out with him. 

“If you’re planning to stalk me home, you need better shoes,” Damien says. 

Mark looks down at his sock-covered feet. “I can drive you back,” he says again. 

“I have legs,” Damien says. “Don’t go out of your way to help me.”

“Then I’ll see you later,” Mark says. And there it is again, the want that simmers under Damien’s chest. There and gone before he knows what it is, let alone what it wants him to do. Mark steps forwards. Then he stops, looking down at Damien. 

Damien has no idea what Mark is expecting from him. He stands on the porch, in the freezing, cloudless night. 

“You should get back inside,” he says. 

Mark’s eyes shutter. Whatever moment was about to happen doesn’t. “Yeah.” Mark says. “Be safe. Text me when you get home.”

“Why, are you pretending to be worried about me?”

Mark doesn’t take the bait. “Yeah. I am. Despite everything, I worry about you.” He fidgets, breaking eye contact with Damien to look at the street light behind Damien’s head. 

“I’ll text.” Damien says. “Bye Mark.” He walks away before Mark answers. 

In the hour it takes for him to walk home, it starts to snow. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Damien starts his non-optional therapy appointment by firmly shutting the door and asking “How do I date your brother.”

“Wh--Damien calm down,” Dr B. says. “What is this about?”

“No. Fuck that, we’re doing what I want for once. No power controlling, no trying to unearth whatever inner trauma I may or may have not inflicted on random strangers in my childhood.” He’s pacing, can’t help it. 5 steps until he hits the office wall, spin around and repeat. He can feel Dr B.’s want for him to sit down and shut up, but Damien has gotten very, very good at ignoring what Dr B. wants from him. “What we’re doing is you telling me what Mark Bryant wants out of a--” It hits him, that this is a really stupid thing to need an answer for and he stops. There’s a blush creeping it’s way up his neck and Damien hates it. “Out of a boyfriend.”

Dr B.’s disapproval rings through the want for Damien to drop this conversation entirely. He glares at her and  _ reaches _ out to the want and shoves it back in her head, replacing it with his own. There’s no elegance behind the motion and Dr B.’s eyes go wide behind her glasses. 

“You have your power back I see.” she says. She’s learned how to fight back against him too. 

“You only just noticed?” Damien retorts. He pushes again. This is all he can do these days. Any finesse he had before his head was broken didn’t come back with the bare scraps of power. 

“Well,” Dr B. aquisces. Her hands steeple under her chin.“I suppose that Mark wants what everyone else wants. Someone who understands and supports him, someone he can trust. Even more so now, considering that’s happened to him.”

“Trust,” Damien says. He starts pacing again, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Pardon?”

“How do I make him trust me?”

“Trust isn’t something you make someone do,” Dr B. reprimands. She catches Damien’s annoyed glance. “ _ Normally _ , which is what you want from me, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion. If you want someone’s trust, you need to earn it.”

“How?”

Dr B.  _ looks _ at him, like she’s just solved a very complicated puzzle. “In my experience, the best way to gain someone’s trust is to be truthful to them, and to let them rely on you and rely on them in turn.”

“Those are just words. How do I actually do any of that?”

“I’d start with not lying, Damien,” She stresses his name in a very specific way, and Damien flinches. 

“ _ Dr. Bright.”  _

Dr B.’s eyes close. She sighs slightly, “That was a low blow, I apologise. Please sit down Damien.”

“I don’t want to.”

“And I’m very glad that you can tell me that,” Dr B. lies. “But right now I would prefer to not have you stalking around my office, if you want we can go for a walk?”

For half a second, Damien considers taking her up on it. Then he remembers how fucking cold it is out there, and he sits down in his usual chair opposite Dr B. 

“Thank you,” She says. 

Damien sneers. “So. Trust. How do I make Mark trust me?”

“The first step to any healthy relationship, romantic or otherwise is communication.” Dr B. starts. 

Damien cuts her off, “Can you not sound like a textbook?”

There’s a flash of irritation, her usual want for him to shut up and listen. “You realise that I could decide that this is by far too big a breach of Doctor Patient separation and ask you to leave?”

“You aren’t going to do that.” Damien says, but he shuts up, and listens. 

“Talk to him,” Dr B. says. “Listen to what he says, and don’t just steamroll your way through to what you want out of a conversation. Take other people’s views into account. If there’s a problem in the relationship it is paramount to have a good support system in place. The most vital part of that support system is simply talking and listening to the other person.” Dr B.’s lips raise slightly, in what is very definitely not a smile, “and apologise when you’re wrong.”

“I apologise, I have apologised!”

“And did Mark accept it?”

“Yes.” Damien thinks. It’s hard to tell, when Mark refuses to talk about it and Damien isn’t allowed to push. 

“Then you’re already on your way to a healthy relationship.” 

“That doesn’t explain how I get to dating him.” 

“Well Damien, I believe the traditional way to go about that is to confess and admit your feelings.”

“That’s hard,” Damien complains. 

Dr B. outright laughs in his face. “If it were easy, there wouldn’t be so many romance movies!”

 

* * *

 

“God Damien can’t you just try and be a good person?”

Okay. Damien thinks, Okay. He’ll try. 

 

* * *

 

Even for the record store it’s a quiet day today. Damien spends the morning re-organising the shelves to be even more user-unfriendly. Classic Rock next to Classical Opera, the lone pop-punk vinyls cleverly hidden at the back of the store under the flickering light. The rest of it he spends intermittently reading through the short-story collection gathering dust under the cashier desk, and answering texts from Mark. 

The book is okay, save for the sections where the pages have fallen out and Damien has to guess what happened in the interim. Mark’s texts are about the same--he’s taken to telling Damien about his day as he does it. Today he’s fiddling about with a camera that Joan gifted him. As a result Damien recognises about half the words in each excited message. Not that he’s ever going to admit that. 

When the bell attached to the door announces a hapless customer, Damien glances up from his phone with a cursory glance. He freezes. Of all the people to walk through his door, it just had to be Chloe the mind reader. Joy--and it had been such a  _ good day. _

“Damien!” Chloe says, sounding as shocked as Damien feels. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Damien says blankly. 

“Oh! I didn’t know you had a job.” She fidgets on the threshold, before nodding firmly to herself and shutting the door behind her. 

“Of course I have a job, how else am I meant to be paying for everything? I can’t just ask people to look the other way these days when I hand them monopoly money.”

Chloe makes a helpless little giggle, she looks almost appalled at herself at the same time. “Did you really do that?”

“Of course not,” Damien says. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to pick up something for Sam,” Chloe says. “She’s been talking about this song she heard and I thought that if anyone would know what it was it would be Sir Douglas.” 

“He’s not here today.” 

Chloe’s want pushes at him, and Damien adds with an aggrieved sigh, “I’m not lying, I can’t give you any more truth than what I already have.” but he adds, when the want doesn’t stop, “I work here every other day so he can rest because the doctor says he’s overworking himself, and I’m the first person he’s hired who hasn’t tried to actually sell any of the records.  Can you stop that already?”

“I’m sorry Damien, I can’t help wanting things.” 

One day, Damien is going to really regret saying that. Oh wait, he already has since the first day that Mark  _ broke his brain. _

“What do you want from me.”

“I’m not sure I want anything from you,” Chloe says, after a moment where she just stares at him with her huge eyes. “Since I really doubt you can help me find this song, and you’re not exactly a person I like to be around.” 

“Then go. Come back when I’m not here.” 

“Yeah.” Chloe says. She tries to smile at him, but it doesn’t really fit. “Yeah, I’ll do that. No point sticking around and all.”

But she hovers in front of him instead of turning around. Her wants are all over the place, exactly like Mark’s without the side effect of making Damien feel like he’s about to be set on fire. Eventually she just gives him another strained smile and opens the door. 

“Wait,” Damien says, not sure what he’s doing. His hand rubs at the jersey covering his forearm.  

Chloe pauses. She looks at him expectantly. 

“Tell Sam I’m sorry.” Damien says. 

“For what?” 

Damien shrugs, “Whatever she wants me to apologise for.” 

Chloe gives him another one of her mile-long stares. The stare darts from Damien’s face, to his worrying hands. “I’ll tell her,” She says. The bell rings as the door closes behind her. 

Damien resists the urge to rest his forehead against the polished wood of the desk.

God, why is this so fucking hard? 

 

* * *

 

Damien is starting to get really sick of feeling like he’s about to be set on fire. 

Unfortunately he has no idea what the fuck is causing it so he’s gritting his teeth and pretending nothing’s wrong. 

“Where are we going?” He asks, for what is probably the fifth time since Mark showed up at his door and told him that it was time to have an adventure.

“I keep telling you, if you know the surprise is ruined.” Mark says. 

“We’ve been hiking for ages.” Damien grumbles, but doesn’t push. The cold morning chill bites at Damien’s cheekbones, and he buries his face further into the collar of his jacket. 

Mark’s hand is over his soulmark. Albeit over three layers of t-shirt, jumper and leather jacket, but really who’s measuring? Not Damien! He’s far too busy feeling every point of contact with the sort of hyper-intensity he usually reserves for trying to prove someone wrong. 

There’s the dull awareness that if Damien wanted to he could just take his arm out of Mark’s hand. He doesn’t. 

Mark, the asshole, acts like he has no idea what he’s doing to Damien. His fingers are stroking the leather of the jacket, tracing an absent minded pattern that burns like a brand against Damien’s skin. His other hand plays with the bulky looking camera looped around his neck. For the past hour he’s been using Damien’s arm as a steering wheel, meandering through back alley’s in a winding circle around the busiest parts of the city center. Rush hour officially hit and the road is filled with cars struggling to get out of the deadlock. Coffee shops spill out dead-eyed commuters who clearly haven’t woken up yet. 

The sun has yet to rise. 

Silhouetted by street lamps, Mark hoists himself up onto the railing surrounding one of the taller buildings. Finally, he lets go of Damien’s arm. Damien curls the offending limb behind his back, and watches in complete bemusement as Mark balances on the thin metal. For a moment Damien just watches as Mark hovers, looking off into the distance. 

It’s probably exactly the sort of shot Mark should be taking with his new, fancy camera. 

Damien considers if it’s worth asking where Mark is going with this again, when Mark suddenly pushes off, one hand on the frame to help him pivot around the corner and vanishes into thin air.

“Shit,” Damien hisses. He rushes around the corner, heart in his throat. So this is it is it? He finally gains--whatever Mark is--only to have him disappear? Dr B. is going to absolutely  _ kill him. _

“Up here.” 

Damien looks up to find Mark dangling from a rickety metal staircase off the side of the building. The gap between where he started and where he is now is far too big for him to have just  _ jumped _ . He’s grinning down at Damien like some asshole cat who's eaten both the cream and the canary.

“Come on. I’ll help you up.” 

Damien looks down, at the clear “no trespassing” sign hanging below Mark’s feet. “Aren’t I meant to be the one leading you into a life of crime?”

Mark just grins, and looks expectantly at him. 

Damien’s life is such fucking bullshit.

Somehow, after a long time of Mark alternating between teasing and coaxing, Damien ends up clinging to the staircase next to him. He has no clue how he got here. Mark generates his own personal bullshit field and Damien is just along for the ride. 

As soon as he’s back in Mark’s personal space, Damien’s arm is once again captured between strong fingers. Damien swallows around the lump in his throat. 

“I probably should have asked you this before, but you’re not afraid of heights are you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Damien says. “Do I get to know where you’re taking me now?”

“Up!”

Unstable metal clatters under their footsteps as Mark drags Damien further up the stairs. Until eventually the two of them end up on the roof, disturbing a flock of pigeons as Mark pulls Damien up onto the concrete. 

“Why are you so light? Do you actually eat anything? You don’t feel like you do.” 

“Yes Mother,” Damien rolls his eyes. He looks around at the skyline of the city, the glimmering lights of the nearby buildings lighting up the darkness of winter morning. “What are we doing up here.”

“Something you’ll find incredibly stupid,” Mark replies. He’s peering down at the street through the camera lens, and Damien hears the mechanic click of photos being taken. 

Damien waits. Eventually Mark snorts, looking up at him with an amused smile. “Say it out loud, or I won’t answer.”

“Okay. What are we doing up here?”

“This is the tallest building in the city that I can climb,” Mark says. “I used to do this kind of stuff before--before. You know, go into abandoned buildings, off access parks and take pictures.”

“And I’m here because?”

“Because I want you to be here.” Mark nudges him in the shoulder, Damien feels his entire side light up. “Can’t you feel that?”

“I can’t feel  _ why _ you want me here.” Damien deflects. 

Mark turns away from him, hiding his face in his camera, “You really are clueless aren’t you,” he murmurs. “Is the ban of taking pictures of you still in effect?”

“Of course it’s still in effect.” 

“Well that’s a shame. I should have brought Chloe. She  _ likes _ having her picture taken.” 

Something dark, and terribly familiar lodges itself in Damien’s stomach. He closes his eyes, and mentally separates the want from the outside world as best he can. He doesn’t quite manage it, judging by the way that Mark’s shoulders stiffen. 

Great. Even when Damien  _ tries _ to do what he’s meant to it doesn’t work. 

“Sorry,” Damien says. 

“You can’t help wanting things,” Mark echoes. “I’m sorry too.” 

“What do you have to be sorry for?” 

“I think you know.”

And Damien can feel the want, desperately begging for Damien not to push any further. Trust. Respect boundaries. Damien lets the want settle around him. He’s only half terrified out of his mind. 

“Still haven’t explained the part where we had to be here before sunrise.” Damien says. 

“You just answered it,” Mark says, thoroughly ignoring Damien now for his camera. “Be patient.” 

Damien buries his nose back in the collar of his jacket. There isn’t anything to do on the roof except bother pigeons, stare at Mark, or contemplate his own mortality by looking over the edge. Obviously, Damien chooses to stare at Mark. 

Every so often, Mark glances at him. His ears turn pinker than can be explained by the cold, and his want tinges into something that feels distinctly  _ pleased _ with itself. 

Then the sky turns pink-orange-red, and lights up Mark’s brown hair copper. And Damien understands. Around them the glass windows of the city catch the rising light, reflecting it back and scattering it until the entire city is illuminated by the dawn. 

Mark’s camera clicks with the sound of a myriad of pictures being taken. 

“That’s why,” Mark says. He isn’t looking in Damien’s direction, and Damien is absurdly glad about this fact. Whatever expression his face is making right now, he’s not quite ready to trust Mark with it yet. “Was it worth it?”

“It was okay,” Damien says. He schools his face into his normal deadpan, taciturn scowl just in time for Mark to lower the camera and smile at him. 

“I guess that’s better than what I was expecting you to say. Maybe I’ll find something you actually like one day.”

“You could ask.” 

“You don’t know what you like,” Mark says, offhand and unthinking. 

Damien has to look away from the honesty. “So what now?” he says instead, “You saw your sunrise. Is there some other natural phenomenon you want to wait around for?”

Mark’s want flickers, smoke through Damien’s fingers. 

“I brought food.” He gestures for Damien to sit with him on the edge of the roof, legs dangling into the open air. Warily, Damien joins him, tucking his legs underneath himself instead of taunting gravity. He watches as Mark rummages through his backpack until he finally pulls out a paper bag and offers it to Damien. The camera is placed much more carefully in a padded side pocket.

Inside the bag sit a variety of pastries. Croissants, and sausage rolls, and something that seems to be half cheese. Damien picks at them, then under Mark’s influence grabs the croissant. He’s not hungry, though he never is. The pastry doesn’t seem poisoned, so there’s one good thing. 

Mark grabs the cheese thing, ripping into it with no regard for how the crumbs fall all over himself and off the side of the building. Out of the corner of his eye Damien sees a group of pigeons shuffling towards the two of them. 

“Is this another part of re-enacting everything?” Damien asks. 

“Maybe I just wanted an excuse to make you eat something.” Mark answers. “You’re skinnier than I am, and I was eating out of a tube until recently.” 

“I’m just built like this.”

“I can count your ribs, Damien.” 

“I’m eating now aren’t I?” 

“I have never seen anyone eat that slowly.” Mark shifts and the line of empty space between their bodies abruptly disappears. “Sorry, Pizza wouldn’t fit in the bag.”

“What?”

“Your favourite food.” Mark frowns. “Unless you’re that much of an asshole that you lied about what your favourite food was for no discernable reason.”

“Oh. That. I didn’t lie.” Damien shifts, uncomfortable. Mark is very warm, and the temperature differential between the two sides of his torso is weird. “Food is fuel, I don’t have a favourite. Making one up seemed easier than explaining it.” 

“You lied about the food, but not about the kiss?”

“Kisses require stories.” Damien takes another pastry. “If I’d told you my first kiss was at fourteen with a boy named Peter you would have wanted details. When and where, all the sticky emotional crap. At that point it’s less effort to just say I haven’t kissed anyone. Food is just food. No one questions it. I didn’t really lie.”

“It’s not the truth.” Mark points out. 

“I’m telling the truth now.” 

“I guess I can’t argue with that.” Mark hums, “Also, you have kissed someone now. You’ve kissed me.” 

Damien flushes. Hot and red all across his cheeks, he can feel it. “What’s the point in bringing that up?”

“To make you blush.” 

“Idiot.” 

“It worked! You’re all red now.” 

“Shut up!”

Mark laughs at him, traitor. Worst friend. Awful soulmate. “Let me take a picture,” he says. 

“No!” Damien hides his face in the collar of his jacket, shoving at Mark as he reaches over to tug the fabric back down. Pigeons squawk, scattering as Mark  _ assaults _ him. Skinny arms grabbing at Damien as he fends off the attack. 

“Are you insane? We’re on the edge of a rooftop! Are you trying to die?”

Mark just laughs, continuing to reach forwards into Damien’s space. In response Damien raises his arms, fending off nosy fingers, so Mark gets a handful of his sleeve instead of collar. And then they both freeze. 

Damien is suddenly, intensely aware of how Mark’s fingers feel above his soulmark. Mark draws back, taking Damien’s arm with him. 

Heart in his throat, Damien lets Mark carefully place his forearm over Mark’s lap. Fingers hovering over the clasp that holds the cuff of his sleeve in place. “Can I look?” 

“You don’t believe in this stuff,” Damien says. 

“No,” Mark agrees, “that doesn’t mean I’m not curious. You’ve seen mine.” 

“Your fault for not wearing longer sleeves.”

“I was wearing a hospital gown. That’s literally the epitome of it not being my fault.” 

Mark’s fingers trace a signature on the inside of Damien’s forearm. Damien is going to suffocate. 

“You’ve already seen it,” Damien tries. 

“Once, in the dark. It doesn’t exactly count.” 

“Why do you want to so badly?”

Mark doesn’t say anything for a long while. “Because I need to know it’s real. Sometimes, I think I’ve gotten it wrong, and you’re just--I don’t know--fucking around. Or maybe it’s changed! That happens sometimes, no one knows why. And it’s--it’s kind of mine isn’t it? My name, on your arm. Why wouldn’t I want to see it?”

“Because you don’t believe in soulmates!”

“Damien,” Mark says, very softly. “Please?” 

The want pushes at Damien, if it was any other person, Damien would be ripping his arm away, getting away and out as fast as possible. But it’s Mark who’s asking. The one person in the world Damien trusts with his head. Damien lets himself fall into the want. And nods. 

Almost reverently, Mark opens up the cuff of his jacket, and pulls up the sweater and T-shirt sleeve up to Damien’s elbow. And there it is. Byron Mark Bryant, in thick black sharpie scrawled all across Damien’s forearm, from the inside of his elbow and ending on his wrist. Damien closes his eyes as Mark carefully traces every single letter. Light, hesitant touches that get bolder on each repeat. Every arc of Mark’s finger sends a shock of electricity falling down Damien’s spine. 

Don’t notice, Damien thinks, don’t notice the rest of it. 

Then Mark’s short nails slot into the harsh white, curved, scars that scatter across the name in sets of four. Damien doesn’t have open his eyes to know that they match perfectly. 

He feels like he’s going to throw up. 

This is it. This is where Mark finally realises that Damien is damaged goods. That he’s not worth whatever redemption this is meant to be. This is where Damien gets left on a roof with his heart in pieces. A headline waiting to happen. 

Flat nails map the path of Damien’s sins. Just as careful, just as softly as they had the words. 

He’s going to vibrate out of his skin. Or have a heart attack. Or both. 

Mark pulls his sleeves down. The snap of Damien’s jacket cuff closing feels so much louder than it has any right to. His eyes won’t open and Mark’s fingers are still holding his arm across his body. But he doesn’t feel as utterly, entirely exposed as he had just a moment ago. Stupid--Mark already knows the secret. It doesn’t matter if Damien’s armour is back in place anymore. 

He wants Damien to look at him. So Damien does. 

Mark’s eyes are brown. One solid colour of deep, almost black, dark brown. Where it’s difficult to tell where his pupil stops and his iris begins. He’s smiling again. Crooked. Perfect. Unthinking, Damien reaches out, and catches the sleeve of Mark’s left arm.  

Damien very desperately wants Mark to kiss him. 

“Anything you can do, I can do better! I can do anything better than you!”

Mark swears, jerking away from Damien to dig into the pocket of his jeans. The trilling ringtone continues “No you can’t. Yes I can. No you--” 

“Hi Joanie!” Mark says into his phone. For all his light tone, there’s an undertone of aggravation. “Aren’t you at work?”

Damien’s hand is still curled around Mark’s wrist. In Mark’s hurried dance to unearth his phone, the sleeve of his coat has shifted. The edge of Robert Gorham just peeks out from the cuff. With two of Damien’s fingers, he can hide the name out of sight. Like there’s nothing there at all. It’s distinctly unfair. 

He can just barely hear the other end of the conversation. 

“Where are you?” Damien raises his eyebrows. He thought Dr B. reserved that particular tone of pissed off just for him. 

“Just decided to go out for a quick walk around the city.”

“Mark, we’ve talked about this. It’s not safe--”

“And you said yourself that Wadsworth already knows I’m back. She’s not interested in me.”

Damien’s grip on Mark’s wrist turns tense. This is news to him, and he’s almost inclined to agree with Dr. B. He’s half in a mind to hustle Mark back home and shut all the blinds. 

“That doesn’t mean I want you taking off before light to go wandering around the city on your own! If something had happened to you, I would have just been left in the dark.  _ Again. _ ”

“Joanie…”

“You didn’t even leave a note.”

Mark hangs his head, sighing. “I’m sorry. I’ll make sure to tell you next time.”

“Thank you.” A pause. “Where are you anyway?” 

“So you haven't let Sam convince you to hack the GPS in my phone,” Mark jokes. “I’m just, downtown.” He’s twisted his hand so he can clutch Damien’s fingers. 

“Oh? Getting some early morning shots with the new camera?” 

He relaxes slightly. “Yeah. You know how it is. The best lighting of the day comes early and leaves immediately.”

She laughs softly. “I’ll drive down there. We can meet at Maryanne’s; it’s been a while since I got to actually sit down for breakfast.”

“I’m, uh.” Mark shoots Damien a panicked glance. Damien has no clue what Mark wants from him. All his feelings have turned into whirlpool soup. “Kind of busy.”

“That’s fine, it’ll take me at least twenty minutes to get down there anyway. Honestly, I can’t believe you walked all the way there on your own. I mean, really Mark, you have to know I would have driven you.”

“You had to get ready for work.” 

“I would have gotten up earlier if you’d wanted me to.”

“Maybe I don’t want to spend every waking moment with my sister.” 

Damien wonders if Dr B. is annoyed or upset when there’s another ominous pause. “That’s... fair. We can talk about setting better boundaries between us. Over breakfast? Pancakes? Bacon? I know you love the bacon there.”

Mark’s grip on the phone tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. He bites down on his bottom lip. 

“Mark? Please.”

“I can’t.”

“I see.” Definitely upset. 

“It’s not that,” Mark rushes to explain. “I just, had plans, and I--”

“Plans with who?” The sharpness is back like a whip crack, and Mark flinches. 

“No one! Just, plans around the city, things to see and catch up on. You know how it is, just another episode in the adventure of Coma-boy.”

A sharp intake of breath. “You’re with Damien aren’t you.”

Mark’s shoulders slump. 

“I cannot  _ believe  _ you Mark! How many times have I told you that that’s not healthy for  _ either  _ of you--”

“Yeah well, it’s not really your decision to make, is it Joanie?” Mark interrupts. 

“I’m just worried, that after everything you’ve been through--”

“Like being kidnapped by the organization you are still in contact with?”

“By Damien!”

“Oh please, he’s not going to hurt me. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t.”

“That’s precisely what I’m worried about!” Joan says, exasperated. “The cavalier attitude with which the two of you treat each other’s mental state--”

“Pretty sure I know my own mental state.” Damien suspects that he’s going to have bruises on his fingers by the end of this. 

“Then you should  _ know _ that you have serious trauma you’ve yet to work through, that you’re--”

“I’m  _ not _ one of your patients,” Mark says, voice sharp. 

“Fine. You want to play this game? You may not be one of my patients, but  _ Damien is. _ And for his sake, if nothing else, I’m going to have to insist that you stop--”

Mark hangs up on her. 

“Well that killed the mood,” he mutters under his breath. Damien is pretty sure he’s not meant to hear that. “Sorry, my sister doesn’t want me to do  _ anything _ with my--” he cuts himself off abruptly. “Friends.”

“She’d be fine if you’d brought Chloe.” Damien says. He’s not sure how to feel about that. In the war that is he and Dr B.’s attempt at a normal doctor/patient relationship he’d be pleased that he’s causing this kind of a reaction in her. The part of him that’s been growing like a particularly sickly flower since he met Mark is hurt that she still doesn’t trust him. You kidnap someone  _ once _ because of shitty reasons…

“Yeah, well I didn’t  _ want _ to bring Chloe. I wanted to bring you.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” Mark says. Then he pauses, “I don’t have to answer that…That’s not just because I’m mimicking you either. You’ve really gotten control over this haven’t you.”

Damien shrugs. 

“Does Joanie know?”

“ _ Joanie _ has been shoving control exercises down my throat,” Damien snaps. “She just thinks I’m evil.” 

“To be fair, you did kidnap me, make me relive major moments of trauma, and before that gaslighted my sister on a weekly basis.”

“And I’ve apologised for all of that. If you don't want me here I can leave!”

For the first time in what feels like weeks, Mark’s wants all turn on a singular point. The force of which feels like a metaphorical anvil hitting Damien over the head. 

“Don’t leave.” Mark says. “Shit. This is why I don’t talk about it! All it does it make everyone miserable.”  

“Get a therapist,” Damien suggests. “I’ve heard they’re very good at this sort of thing.” 

Mark barks a laugh, “My options are Joan, or someone else from the AM, I think I’ll chance it.” 

“Anything you can do, I can do better! I can do anything better than you!” Trills Mark’s phone. Again.  

“Oh my god, can I just have  _ five minutes _ where you don’t try and micromanage my life, Joan.” Mark snatches the phone, stands up on the edge of the roof and chucks the still singing device with an overhand throw. 

Damien watches it fall, morbidly fascinated to see if it’ll hit anyone. It doesn’t, and it’s too far away to make out if it explodes into a million pieces or not by the time it reaches the ground. 

“Mark,” he says. “What the fuck.” 

Mark doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to when Damien can hear his want singing out all the reasons for him. 

He wants Damien here. He doesn’t want to be yelled at by his sister for that want.  _ He wants Damien here _ . He threw his phone off the roof because he wants Damien here. 

Damien ducks his head into his collar as soon as he feels the grin spread across his face. Mark likes him. Mark really, really likes him. When he finally gets his face under control, he aims a smirk upwards. 

“Aren’t you meant to have better impulse control these days?”

Mark huffs. “I needed a new one anyway.” 

Damien can’t help it, he barks a laugh. He hears Mark try to stifle a giggle, and then obviously give up as a guffaw releases out of his throat. 

And then there are hands on either side of Damien’s face, tilting his jaw up, and Mark leans down, and kisses him. 


	4. Chapter 4

Mark draws away too soon. He shuffles, hesitating before he sits back down. There’s a good foot of space between Damien’s knee and Mark’s side now. “Was that okay?” he says to the rooftop. 

“If you’re asking for kissing skills, I can’t help.” The phantom of Mark’s lips against his own is pins and needles that don’t go away even when Damien presses his fingers against his mouth. “I’ve only kissed you, remember?”

Mark rolls his eyes, “I meant that I kissed you at all, you idiot.”

“That’s a stupid question.” 

“Is it? Do you remember what your power does?”

Mark won’t look at him, and Damien isn’t sure what he’s done wrong this time. “You can’t feel it?” 

“Feel what?”

“I’ve been wanting you to kiss me since we got up here.” Damien admits. 

Mark’s eyes dart to the corner of his eye to look at Damien. “Oh. I-- I thought that was me.”

“Now who’s the idiot?” Underneath his fingers, Damien can’t help but grin. 

“Oh shut up,” Mark says. His want settles in Damien’s stomach. 

He leans forwards, unsure, but wanting more of whatever that feeling promises. Mark meets him in the middle, tilting Damien’s head to a better angle with a happy little hum that vibrates in Damien’s mouth and echoes to meet the want building through him. Mark’s lips are soft, slightly chapped from the cold. He hasn’t shaved yet this morning and the rough stubble scrapes against Damien’s cheek. Damien keeps smiling into it, even though it makes it harder to kiss properly. Mark doesn’t seem to mind, inching closer and closer until he’s back to being pressed against Damien’s side. He keeps making little pleased noises into Damien’s mouth. 

There’s too much of Damien that wants to just sit here and bask in Mark’s wants forever. But as much as Damien doesn’t want to think about it (Mark’s doing), the problem that is Dr B. (And everyone else in the world) keeps raising its head. That’s also Mark’s doing. Sometimes Damien thinks that he needs non-optional therapy more than Damien does. 

He’s not going to be Mark’s secret. As easy as that would make everything, Mark is a terrible liar and Damien has to see Dr B. every two weeks so she can pick his brain. The damage is done--she already knows. Maybe if Damien gets off the roof right now he can cross state lines before she murders him. 

“What are you going to tell your sister?”

Mark’s shoulders slump, he draws away from Damien’s neck. “I don’t know. She’s probably right--being the one with the psychology degree and all. I’m hurting you.”

Damien stills. “You’re not.” 

“Damien,” Mark says, voice pained. “You told me you only got your job because you couldn’t walk away from an old guy talking about his grandchildren. And I’m worse--because I have your power as well. It doesn’t matter if you get better because I’m always going to be able to  _ do this. _ That’s--I don’t  _ want _ to do that to you.”

“I don’t mind,” Damien says. 

“That’s really not the point! And anyway, if she’s right about this, she’s probably right about the fact that I’m fucking up your recovery.” 

“It’s getting better.” 

“Is it?” 

Damien looks out at the street below. A mother wrangles two teenagers into crossing the road after looking both ways. In the distance someone badly plays guitar through a shitty, too-loud speaker. 

He can feel Mark’s want, and he can feel the way he wants that thing too, but doesn’t have to act on it. If Mark wanted him to jump off the side of a building, Damien would probably do it but because it was  _ Mark _ , not because of the compulsion. And he can feel his own ability, not as strong as before and therefore infinitely more manageable. Sure, he could want Mark to kiss him until he’s breathless (he does want Mark to kiss him until he’s breathless) but it’s locked in his head. Damien could want  _ anything _ right now and no one would know. 

“On my own I’m fine.” Damien says. 

Mark makes a hurt noise, and cringes away from Damien. 

“That’s not what I meant.” Damien reaches, and gives in to the urge (is it his or Mark’s? Does it matter?) to lace their fingers together. “I don’t fight it. When it’s just us, I don’t bother separating out what I want and what you do.” 

“Why not?”

“Because I trust you.” 

He thinks. Hopes might be more accurate. Kisses and trust, Mark Bryant is his first for both and he has no idea how either is meant to feel like.

Mark’s thumb circles around Damien’s knuckles. “I don’t,” He says, very quietly. 

Damien can feel his heart curl up and die. 

“I don’t trust myself. I’m not sure I ever can.” He looks at Damien through his lashes. “But I think I could trust you.” His face twists into a smile, “God, Joanie’s right. That’s so fucked up.”

“I have been informed that’s what therapy is for,” Damien says.  

“ _ No _ . I get enough of that from Joannie, I’m not getting it from my--from you too.” Mark says. He practically collapses into Damien’s side. “How about we do something more fun than nagging me?” 

“Like what?”

Mark’s hand tangles in his hair. “Like this,” He says, against Damien’s lips. Damien closes his eyes, and falls into the want. 

 

* * *

 

Damien spots the sensible faded blue of Dr B’s. car before Mark does. There’s no time to react. One minute he’s leaning into Mark’s want of him being close, the next he’s jolting apart as Dr B. screeches into the nearest parking spot, and stomps towards them. The edges of her eyes are red. 

“You cannot just hang up on me, Mark!” she starts, “At least have the courtesy of sending me a text that you’re fine! I didn’t know what had happened, you left me in the dark. Again! I thought you were--hurt or stuck, or arrested or something, you can’t  _ do that! _ ” 

She pulls Mark into a desperate hug, rising on her tiptoes to gain enough height to put her chin on Mark’s shoulder. 

“Sorry Joanie,” Mark says. He raises his free hand and wraps it around his sister. “I may have done something kind of stupid with my phone.”

Dr B. draws away to look Mark in the eye. “What did you do?”

“Threw it off a building.” 

“ _ Mark!” _

“I’m sorry?” 

“Sorry does not cut it. Do you know how long I’ve been driving around  _ looking _ for you? What if you had been seriously injured?” 

“Well, I wasn't. So…”

Dr B. shakes her head. “You’re impossible,” She says. Her gaze flicks down Mark’s body, obviously checking to make sure he’s in all the pieces he was this morning. Damien can tell by the way she steps back that she’s noticed that he and Mark are linked at the fingers. That same calculating stare is dragged across his own person, resting briefly at his neck. Too late, Damien tugs his collar up to hide both the small smile that he can’t stop wearing, and the hickey blooming dark on the corner of his jaw. 

“Really Mark?” Dr B. says, truly exasperated. “You don’t answer my calls because you were too busy  _ necking _ ?” 

Mark’s face blooms scarlet. 

Dr B. sighs, “Well I suppose that’s the final shred of Dr/Patient distance gone. Come on, both of you in the car. It’s  _ freezing _ out here.” 

Ah. Well that explains why Damien wants to give her his jacket. 

 

* * *

 

Mandatory therapy two days later is… awkward to say the least. The hickey is still painfully dark against Damien’s skin and the office is too hot for Damien to wear his usual layers that would half hide it from sight. Dr B.’s eyes flick from Damien’s arm, the hickey, and then at the wall behind him. 

“You seem… Happier,” she puts delicately. 

“You don’t.” Damien drawls. 

“I would prefer it if these sessions had at least some modicum of professionalism,” Dr B. says. 

“Why? You don’t with anyone else.”

“Some abilities make it harder to keep that separation than others.”

“I would have thought that wouldn’t be a problem with time travel.” 

Dr B’s mouth becomes a thin, narrow line. “There were mitigating circumstances involved.”

She wants him to stop talking. She wants him to leave the room, leave her life. Mark would probably not appreciate Damien driving his sister to angry tears and shouting. But he can’t just leave. The therapy sessions are non-optional from the other side of the metaphorical desk Dr B. doesn’t own. On the other hand she clearly doesn’t want him here. He rubs at the sleeve of his left arm. Unsure what he’s meant to be doing. 

“Why did you give me all that crap about trust when you didn’t want Mark to date me?” Damien asks. “You could have lied.”

“I was advising you as your therapist.” Dr B. says. “In that capacity it would have been unethical to deliberately give you misinformation.” She pauses, “Also you made me, if I recall correctly.”

“I didn’t make you tell the truth,” Damien points out. But it feels like a hollow excuse under Dr B.’s glare. “Fine. As my therapist you told the truth. But if I had asked Joan Bryant you would have lied.”

“Joan Bryant is not someone you need to concern yourself with.” 

“I’m not so sure about that,” Damien says. “See she’s kind of my soulmates sister. And I’d prefer it if she stopped thinking of me as a monster.”

There’s a long pause. Damien fidgets, first with his sleeve, then with the pain that pressing against the hickey with his fingers causes. Under his eyelashes, he studies how Dr B. clacks the nib of her pen against her notebook several times, before sighing, and setting the entire thing aside. 

“I doubt that she sees you as a monster, Damien.”

“She acts like it.” The urge to push, to make Dr B. explain everything is a particularly annoying insect in the back of Damien’s mind. He quashes it, just in case he loses control. It’s not the right time to use his ability. Even Damien can feel that. 

“Well, do you think that might be because of something you did?” 

Damien bristles, “I’m not always the cause of every problem!” 

“I didn’t say that. I asked if you thought she might have a reason for treating you unkindly.” 

This is game is such fucking bullshit. She knows all the answers already. But this is the first time that Dr B. has  _ ever _ listened to him so what the hell. Damien will play. 

“I wasn’t a very nice person when we first met.” he says, and it  _ stings _ to admit. “I used her, and she used me back, and she didn’t exactly like it when I got the upper hand.” 

Dr B.’s jaw twitches. Damien waits for her to do something, but she just waves her hand, carry on. 

“And she thinks that I’m inherently too abusive to ever have a proper relationship. Especially with her  _ precious little brother.  _ And that I’m childish. It’s not  _ my _ fault that life has taught me you don’t get to be soft and sweet and expect it to reward you back. Every time I try and be a normal person I get punished. Of course I wasn’t going to be  _ nice. _ ”

“I can see how a relationship that seems to have been formed on mutual antagonism must be uncomfortable.” 

“That’s one way of looking at it.” Damien mutters. 

“Is this a relationship you want to be... less antagonistic?” Dr B. looks like she’s swallowed a lemon. 

Damien can’t look at her. There’s too many questions, and there’s too little he’s comfortable saying out loud. Joan Bryant’s opinion of him has always been something that Damien has both embraced and rejected. He’s a bad person, and they both know it. She’s also the closest thing he’s had to a friend for several years. He’s not  _ her _ friend of course, no matter how much he tried to make it true, it never stuck.

Things like that never do, but Damien’s heart has never stopped trying to reach out. To connect. He’s pathetic.

“I just want her to like me,” he says. And then he hides his face in his hands, because he didn’t mean to say that out loud. 

The silence stretches. 

Dr B. coughs lightly, “I believe that’s the first time I’ve heard you be truthful without an agenda behind it.” 

“Surprised I can manage it?” He pulls his usual unaffected drawl into it. 

“It is nice to know that buried somewhere inside you there’s a heart.” 

Damien bristles. And then Dr B. sighs softly. “I don’t think you’re a monster, Damien. I think you’re arrogant, dangerous with your power and how you treat others, and in general a thoroughly unlikable person. But for whatever reason Mark is… insistent on being involved with you, and that means that whatever I think, I have to respect Mark’s decision. Though I do wish that the two of you would take at least a modicum of care with your mental health.” 

“So you’re not going to bar me from seeing him.” 

“I think if I tried neither of you would obey my decision. Considering that you haven’t so far.” 

Damien lets his hands fall. 

He studies her, not for the first time. Eyes like Mark, hidden behind tasteful frames. Her carefully put together suit so no one knows what a mess she really is inside. The recorder half hidden under her chair, humming slightly with electrical feedback. He’s always known that she was just as messed up inside as he was, buried under all the layers of professionalism she pretends to have. A different sort, maybe, but the same difficulty to just be a person instead of one that watches them. That’s what made her so compelling to talk to, even before he knew about atypicals, the AM, her brother. 

“But you’d be happier if he was with Sam.” Damien says. 

Dr B. has the decency not to lie to him about it. Damien has the decency not to push her into answering. 

The rest of the session Damien walks through the mind-numbing control exercises that Dr B. had informed him were originally made for empaths, and then the ones for telepaths, and then the very special few that are just for him because that’s just how fucked up Damien’s brain and power are. 

He only complains through three quarters of them. Sometimes he’s capable of having manners. When he wants to. 

They feel familiar now, comforting. He can feel her wants, and he can feel his and he can pick which ones to act on, which ones to let other people act on. 

Control. For as long as he practices. 

Then, finally, an hour later, Damien can escape with at least most of his pride intact. He gathers up his coat, mutters some kind of goodbye, see you whenever you next demand me to. 

At the threshold of the door, Damien pauses, turns around. 

“Dr Bryant,” He says, “I’m sorry.”

Maybe he’s imagining it, but Damien swears that just before he closes the door behind him, he sees Dr B. smile behind her curtain of hair.     

 

* * *

 

**Message Received From:** Mark  
  
**Mark:** Did u do something to j?  
  
**Mark:** That was a bad way to phrase it shes being a lot nicer about the whole u and me thing today and i know you had therapy with her earlier  
  
**Damien:** We talked.  
  
**Mark:** ominous. Was it about me?  
  
**Damien:** I think it was about her.  
  
**Mark:** Well thats even more disturbing thanks dami  
  
**Damien:** Is it really that hard to write 2 more letters.  
  
**Mark:** Sweetheart? Honey? Creampuff?  
  
**Damien:** No.  
  
**Mark:** Dami it is  
  
**Mark:** Anyway were doing a thing tomorrow evening you know the market thats set up outside the arts museum? For xmas? Chloe wants to do a friendship thing there and j says i can invite u  
  
**Mark:** So this is me inviting u  
  
**Mark:** Its probably going to be full of people and i know u hate crowds but it might be fun! Theres food and beer and the best pretzels Chloe has ever had in her life she promises  
  
**Mark:** Oh i guess thats two food things  
  
**Mark:** Therell also be me!  
  
**Mark:** Im being punished for the nicknames arent i.  
  
**Mark:** How about i put u down as a solid maybe and text u the address and u can tell me when u get there  
  
**Damien:** What happens if I don’t show up at all?  
  
**Mark:** U will.  
  


 

* * *

 

The bitter cold stings at Damien’s exposed cheeks and nose. As promised, the market is more crowded than anywhere Damien would willingly spend time in. Assorted stalls are set up in disorganised lines, forming walkways thronged with bright christmas lights that shine in the dark winter evening. There’s the smell of a million different foods; sweets and meat and hot drinks, coming from a million different places at once. 

Mark has sent him a selfie where he grins manically at the camera in his phone, his actual camera hanging around his neck. Behind him, almost obscured by bright lights that throw shadows all over it’s form, is a familiar abstract sculpture that Damien passes every day to work. He’s still there when Damien finally manages to pick his way through the crowd, pushing the want to not be touched at everyone who gets close enough.

Mark, for once clad in clothes that fit the weather, including gloves, hat, and scarf, leans against the pedestal of the sculpture. In one hand he cradles a half full tankard of beer. Neither Dr B. or Chloe are around, as far as Damien’s cursory glance can make out. For all he knows they’re three feet away, but too short to see, it’s that crowded. 

He announces his presence to Mark by calmly removing the tankard out of Mark’s lax grip and pouring the last half of it onto the street. 

“Hey!” Mark protests, “you can’t just do that with someone else’s drink.” 

“Your control is shitty when you’re drunk,” Damien says. He leans next to Mark, setting the glass on his other side. “Do you want to find out what my power, plus Chloe’s, plus whoever knows what else is here is like when you can’t turn any of them off?”

“It’s one drink, I’m not going to be that bad.”

Damien levels a flat look at his  _ idiot _ of a soulmate. Mark matches it for three seconds, before deflating. He laughs slightly, rubbing the back of his head. 

“I won’t drink anymore,” he promises. And then his face  _ lights up _ with a smile as he grabs Damien’s hand and laces their fingers together. “Hi.”  

Bemused, Damien says, “Hello.” 

“You’re here.” 

“You’re the one who invited me.” Damien says. 

“Yes. But you’re you, and you never actually said if you were going to be here or not. So if you hadn’t shown up in another thirty minutes or so, I was just going to drown my sorrows and spam you with pictures all night to show you what you were missing out on.” 

“I would have just deleted them.” 

“You are so cruel,” Mark says but he’s still making that weird, soft grin in Damien’s direction. “Come on, help me buy something for Joanie.”

Before Damien can complain, Mark tows him away from the sculpture, back into the horde of screaming people. Damien immediately pushes the compulsion to not be touched by anyone else, and feels the mirror of it in Mark’s uncontrolled want. Along with Mark’s other want: don’t notice, I’m not here, pass us over. Obviously, the crowd parts around them. Not that it stops Mark from being close enough that Damien can feel his body heat against his side. Not that it stops Damien from sliding into the space under Mark’s arm like he belongs there. 

“You’re  _ freezing,”  _ Mark says. “You feel like an icicle.” 

“It’s the middle of winter. Of course I’m freezing.” 

“Ok but you’re like, extra freezing. You see? It’s because you’re so skinny.”

“Why are you obsessed with my weight?”

Mark shrugs. “Because it’s been months and you’re now thinner than I am; the guy who was being fed through a tube for however many years. I’m just saying there’s something wrong there.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Damien grumbles. “Why are  _ you _ hiding us from everyone else?” 

“I’m--not so great around crowds right now,” Mark laughs, half hollow. “I keep freaking out about picking up someone’s power that I don’t know how to deal with. And I’ve gone places and forgotten everyone can hear me which worked out really great so… It’s easier right now for me to be invisible.” 

“So that’s the real reason you invited me. So I can be your privacy bubble.”

“I mean it’s not the  _ only _ reason.” 

Mark leans even further into Damien’s personal space, until his nose is practically melding with the top of Damien’s head. 

This would be embarrassing, except for the way that no one is able to rest their eyes on Damien properly. 

“I’m really not kidding about how cold you are though. Come here.” 

Mark unfurls his scarf from around his neck and wraps it around Damien. He tucks the ends into the bare amount of space between the collar of Damien’s coat and his chin. It smells like Mark and Damien feels his face heat. 

“There.” Mark smiles. He leans forwards and briefly kisses the end of Damien’s nose. “Now at least you don’t  _ look _ like you’re trying to get frostbite.” 

“You’re an idiot.” Damien says. He buries his tingling nose deeper into the scarf, instantly regretting it when he inhales.  

“You like me. So who’s the real idiot?” 

“Aren’t we meant to be finding something for your sister right now?” 

“Oh. Right. Yeah, we should do that before they start wondering where I am again.” Mark says. He takes Damien’s arm and drags him through the parting crowd. “So I was thinking that I should maybe get her earrings? She used to wear these tiny metal studs all the time but I think she lost them. But the piercing holes haven’t healed yet so she must wear them  _ sometimes _ . Do you think she’d like blue ones? Oh! Hey these ones look like tiny light bulbs!”

Damien half listens. Mark pauses at almost every stall, blatantly using Damien’s power to cut through the throng so he can poke and prod at the items on sale. Wooden frogs that croak out of tune, Clockwork displays that spell out scenes of saccharine winter cheer. 

The entire time he doesn’t let go of Damien’s hand.  

He keeps having to duck his face into Mark’s scarf, even though that scent is doing strange things to his insides. It’s not so much that he wants to chase the feeling, so much as it’s the fact that he can’t stop his face from forming idiotic smiles, even when Mark’s not paying any attention to him at all. 

Well, that’s not quite true. Mark is paying attention, in the constant inane chatter he keeps up, the quick glances back in Damien’s direction, the subtle shift and swing of his gloved hand in Damien’s. He’s just not watching him in the way Damien is used to--the wary stare of keeping an eye on a venomous spider before it can scurry out of sight. Or worse, the lovestruck gaze of someone well and truly under his influence, right before they snap his heart between their hands. 

Why is that? Because Mark doesn’t consider him a threat? 

“...of course I already have my present for you, but I’m honestly not sure if I’m going to finish in time so maybe I should have got something else before you showed up as well. And that’s not even--”

Damien stops short. “Wait. Repeat that.” 

Mark raises his eyebrows. “You haven’t been listening to a thing I’ve said, have you.”

“In my defence,” Damen says, “you say a lot. What do you mean you’ve gotten me a present?”

“Oh!” Mark’s eyes shine. “I know we didn’t talk about it, and you don’t have to get me anything, but it’s honestly perfect, trust me. It’s been killing me not giving it to you the past month. I wish everyone else was as easy to shop for, there’s plenty of things that fit Joanie but they all seem a little kitschy...”

There he goes again. 

Damien follows in his wake, still a little stunned. He can’t remember the last time he got a gift. Well, no he can remember exactly the last time he got a gift, because he’d orchestrated the entire thing. This is different. Mark went out, alone, looked around a store for something Damien would like, bought it, wrapped it up and is waiting to present it to him. 

Like it mattered. Like he mattered. 

A month, Mark had said. He saw something a whole month ago, and thought of Damien. 

Damien shifts his hand up to Mark’s wrist, circling where his name is under layers of cloth. He knows Mark feels it, because he turns giving Damien a questioning look. Damien shakes his head, not saying anything. What can he say? 

Something must give him away because Mark turns, his free hand coming up to rest on Damien’s face. “Hey, you okay? We don’t have to stay if the crowd’s too much; Sam and Chloe won’t mind if I bail.”

It’s a little too much. Mark’s hand on his cheek, the scarf, the mark on his wrist, everything. Maybe it’s the control exercises Damien is forced to do every week, but it’s a small miracle that his control doesn’t slip and he makes the entire crowd want to kiss Mark Bryant. 

“A watch,” he says. Fighting the urge to step back and run, fighting the urge to lean into Mark’s space and never leave. “An old analog one, with that antique patina if you can manage. Something heavy, with weight to it. Nothing that beeps or shines.”

Mark studies him, “Uhm?” 

Damien ducks his head into the scarf--bad idea, and turns his head away from those impossible brown eyes. “For your sister.” 

“Oh!” Mark turns, scanning through the stalls. “I think I saw some watches earlier…”

Damien follows, fingers encircling Mark’s wrist. Mark glances at him again, a question lingering in the tilt of his mouth. Damien smiles, hidden by the scarf, and squeezes Mark’s wrist. He’s fine, he wants Mark to know that he’s fine. 

Mark echoes the smile, and chatters away about his adventures in learning how pop culture has changed since he got kidnapped. And then he stops short, snorting slightly. “Oh, I  _ see _ . I’m not the only one who ditched Joanie after all.” He points behind Damien’s head, where Sam and Chloe are lit up in red and yellow fairy lights.

“Hey!” Mark yells, hand cupped around his mouth, “Chloe! Sam! Over here!”

Damien winces, at the yell that had effectively started right next to his ear. “They’re too far away to hear you.” He says, proven by the fact that neither Sam nor Chloe look in their direction.

“No, they’re close enough.” Mark laughs. “They’re just busy ignoring the rest of the world to stare into each other’s eyes.”

Damien turns enough so he doesn’t have to crick his neck to get a good look at the two women. He’s just in time to catch Chloe rise up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Sam’s nose in a strange, disconcerting mirror of Mark’s earlier gesture. They’re close, breathing each other’s air, Sam’s hands tucked in the back pockets of Chloe’s jeans, Chloe’s arms looped around Sam’s neck. 

He felt like an intruder just for that small glance. He turns his head away. He and Mark aren’t the only two watching the display. 

Damien’s always been good at body language. Always been good at spotting soulmates from just regular couples. It’s like watching two puzzle pieces fit together, people drawn to each other and snap together  _ perfectly _ . If he’d ever doubted that Mark was lying about the two of them, he certainly doesn’t anymore. 

Next to him, Mark rolls his eyes. “See, this is what I’m talking about,” he says, dragging Damien towards the two women. “It’s one thing to be all wrapped up in each other when no one’s watching, but this open display? We have way more class than this.” His tone is mocking, his lips quirked up in a smile, inviting Damien in on the joke.

Damien looks ahead at Chloe and Sam, breaking apart now that they’ve seen Mark and Damien. He’s not sure what’s so funny. 

“Hey!” Chloe bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, waving, “Mark, I wasn’t sure you were coming back.” Sam holds her other hand, fingers encircling Chloe’s wrist. 

Familiar. 

Damien has the horrifying realisation that he and Mark are a mirror of them. He stops. Mark turns on his heel, looking back in concern again. “Damien? It’s okay, they’re fine with--”

Damien cuts him off, pulling Mark in for a kiss, hands cupping his face. Mark’s lips part after a moment, slowly matching Damien’s hunger, hands gripping the lapels of Damien’s jacket tight, holding him close. 

Nobody pays them any attention. And Damien’s just fine with that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a [tumblr.](http://bandit-writes.tumblr.com)
> 
> Thank you all for reading!


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